Week 9 Recap: Bills DOWN Chiefs, Bears/Bengals FIREWORKS, Big Wins for Steelers/Vikings, and More!
[Music] Fel like the football gods knew that Derek was back this week. We had a couple sleepy weeks, couple weeks where the witching hour was there was no witching. There was nothing enjoyable about it. There was nothing mystical about it. And then we come in today, there was a point in the early slate, late in the early slate, where every single game was within 10 points. There was tons of fun stuff going on and then obviously we get a banger of a Bills win in the late window. And so I think people knew that you were back in town. They were ready to bring it for you. I feel like the football god smited me. Did you see what the Packers did? Well, yeah, that’s maybe in your own personal world, things didn’t go great. But overall, I think we got blessed with a pretty damn good day in week nine. I almost had to retach myself how to deal with the chaos because it has been kind of sleepy. Like we haven’t had a crazy finish to the early window in a few weeks and the Europe games have kind of taken one of the big matchups out of the equation and there we were at whatever time it was like 258 and I’m like holy [ __ ] I don’t know where to look and it’s been it feels like it’s been a month since that was the case. It was great. Let’s start with a massive win for the Buffalo Bills. We’re going to talk about the Sunday night game on the hangover tomorrow. just a heads up. So, and it’s worth mentioning after a performance like that. Yeah, I I think on two fronts. One, the performance that the Seahawks had and just the domination on that front. We’re going to dig into that on the hangover tomorrow and then obviously looks like Jaden Daniels is going to be out for an extended period of time. That is a seasonal altering injury for Washington. And so, we’re going to dig into that in earnest tomorrow. Just throwing that out there. And then we’ll talk about the other couple games that we’re going to hit on the hangover a little bit later on this show. But other than the Sunday night performance, the only place you can really start today is with what the Buffalo Bills did to the Kansas City Chiefs. This is about as good a performance as you could possibly hope for if you are the Bills. The offense did really whatever they wanted perg, 55 a.5% offensive success rate for the Bills. They ran the ball well. They were explosive throwing the ball down the field, which is something we talked about on the preview show. Where are they going to find some of these explosives in the passing game? They did it consistently. But Derek, the most notable thing about this game for Buffalo is what they were able to do to the Kansas City Chiefs offense and namely to Patrick Mahomes. I mean, Mahomes was absolutely rolling coming into this game. We talked about it on the preview show. Per NextGen stats, 32.5% drop back success rate for Mahomes in this game. His worst regular season mark as a starter in the NFL. When you take what the Bills defense was doing and what the Chiefs offense was doing, it is hard to square how bad of a day the Chiefs passing game had today. It was startling. And at one point it didn’t feel like it was that bad because they had hit a bunch of explosives, right? Like they were able to kind of move the ball down the field that way and get a couple of those. Then I looked up, I remember, obviously this was before the game ended, but at one point Patrick Mahomes was like 10 for 22. I was like really? But it was because they were just getting a couple of those chunk plays. And so I thought what was interesting about this game is like it seems like the only times you can really get Patrick Mahomes like this are when you index all of your resources into doing so. Like the Bengals game when the playoff game that they played a bunch uh or like five years ago at this point which that seems crazy. Um but when they played that game Lou was going to a lot of like the drop eight stuff and it was like we’re just going to have bodies in coverage and Robert you you can bring up the numbers in a second. I would love to hear them. They played a ton of dime in this game, which like that’s like, okay, if they’re just going to pass and have all these light bodies on the field, then we’re just going to overindex into stopping the pass. Yeah, they had a pretty extreme game plan on a few different fronts and it worked about as well as the Bills possibly could have hoped. So, you’re looking at it and it just seemed like they had 60Bs on the field for a huge chunk of this game. Buffalo did. And the numbers bear that out. 45 12% dime for the Bills in this game. That is the highest single game rate of the Shawn McDermott era. and the Chiefs had a 34 and a half percent success rate on those plays per nextgen stats. And so I think it was a combination of a lot of different things. They had a lot of pass defense bodies on the field consistently and so that was clearly part of the game plan. I think that is where things I thought the Bills did a fantastic job of mixing up coverages because they played a decent amount of man in this game, but I think the final numbers on it in terms of percentages. Uh let me see if I can find it really right here really quickly because I do want to throw that out there. So 34 a.5% for the Bills playing man coverage in this game. That’s not a ton, but Mahomes was six of 12 on those plays. But I think the most important thing is how well they were mixing up coverages throughout the game. They did a fantastic job of disguising. I mean on the the grounding is a really good example of this. The grounding that probably shouldn’t have grounding because it was tipped. On that play, the Bills are lined up in single high. They bail out into cover two. It’s actually a play action pass. So Mahomes snaps his head around after thinking it probably is going to be man coverage and it’s some funky version of cover two. The Bills were doing that consistently throughout the entire game. What we talked about coming into this thing is that Mahomes had done such an incredible job this season when you knew when he knew what it was going to look like pre- snap. He was finding answers so quickly. Every single team they were playing against when they were playing zone coverage. And I think the Bills did such a great job of giving him like just a little split second of indecision in that first two and a half seconds in the play the entire game and consistently taking away those instant options that had really been there for the past month for the Chiefs. And I think it’s worth pointing out, I love all of that, but the tried and true way to get to Patrick Mahomes is to pressure him. Yeah. And the uh the Bills beat the crap out of the Chiefs offensive tackles in this game. It kind of this game was such a It was like a feverdream of the things the Bills have daydreamed of going well. You know, like that’s right, Joey Bosa. You bring in Joey Bosa to have a game like this. And Joey Bosa sort of leads the charge on the on the edge. Greg Russo was incredible, too. you get that going. Your first round pick, Maxwell Haristston, like just got back and and play like, you know, he had a big play in this game. Dalton Concincaid looked like the guy that you got excited about making the first tight end drafted in his draft class. Like all that stuff, all the decisions that the Bills have made over the last few years, it all kind of felt like it came to fruition. And yeah, I mean, clearly Mahomes was was flumxed by a lot of what the Bills were doing, but also just hassled all day long. And I I was joking with Bill’s fans during the game. I was like, “What would what would you do to ensure that Joey Bosa did this again in January?” Cuz like that’s why he’s here. It’s fun to see this, but it would be so fun if this stuff came to fruition on that stage instead of just in November, too. I I think that’s exactly right. When you think about what they wanted to be coming in through this off seasonason into this season, what the Bills wanted to be on defense, the things they needed to come through for them, most of those things came through today. The another one, Cole Bishop. part of that game of his life. I joked to you in like the third quarter. So, and I think he had made another play or two after this that I was like, I’m pretty sure Cole Bishop has made more plays in this game than he has made like his entire NFL career up to this point. Like he was awesome in this game. And speaking of Yeah. like trying getting all the stuff that you really wished would come to fruition this season and also on top of like mixing up their coverages. Well, I just thought all the Bills DBs, it felt like there were just moments where they were on top of Kansas City [ __ ] in a really impressive way. They ne no one was covering grass ever in this game ever. They did a phenomenal job of attaching themselves to routes even when they were playing zone coverage the whole game. The the fourth and three the co that’s why I wanted to bring it up the it’s uh second quarter about just over four minutes left. It’s fourth and three. Kansas City has trips to the right. They like do a little bit of motion I think with the with the number three bring him back and then they fast motion the back out to the right to create a 4×1. They do this stuff all the time. They try to overload you and get one of your zone defenders out of the way. Cole Bishop starts to slide and then goes, “No, no, no. They’re trying to pull me.” Drives back on the number three. And it’s just like that’s that’s an incredible play. And also, I think if you watch how that play unfolds, Kelsey is standing right next to Rice is the number on that play, right? I think I think Kelsey is the intended receiver and Rice is the number two next to him. I I don’t I think it’s the opposite. I think Kel I think they try to run Bishop off with Kelsey and he just doesn’t move. He’s sitting right on that because that’s exactly what they want you to do. they’re trying to throw the ball. He does not exactly what the intent of these plays were playing into the Chief’s hands. And so I think the Bishop as a part of this, you mentioned Joey Bosa, there was a two-play sequence from Bosa early in the second quarter that’s like this is a guy they just haven’t had before. And even when Greg Russo is playing well, this is a guy that it just has a gear when he is healthy that they have not had before. He works a around Jawan Taylor. Joey Bosa does uh to get like a two-yard TFL to make it second and 12 and then on that same drive he gets a pressure on the on the next play on third down and so like he just that guy well and being healthy that’s why they went out and tried to get that gear within their defense they just haven’t had so you have Bosa you have Maxwell Haristston coming in the two plays that stick out to me the interception obviously you know that’s a big play in the game but there’s a play on the Chief’s second drive where they tried to take a deep shot to Xavier Worthy and Haristston is running with him step for step down the sideline. That is a skill set on the other side of Christian Benford that this team did not have last year and you felt that when these two teams played in the playoffs. So there’s another one of them. Michael Hoy was really big in this game and the fact that he tore his Achilles is a huge bummer because you saw the ways they were trying to use him. And I actually think one of the other kind of layers to the Bills defensive game plan that’s worth pointing out, it was a lot of 60Bs in this game, but on a huge chunk of these plays, they were actually using three defensive linemen and two linebackers. And so it was like Hoy and then Dorian Williams at times. And they were doing something we’ve seen a lot of teams trot out against some of these scrambling quarterbacks this year where you have this three-man rush and then you kind of have like a mush rush with with the linebacker. And so they were doing everything they could to have somebody accounting for Mahomes in some of those scrambling opportunity moments and Hoy was a part of that. He was they were lining him up as a spinner. So he was kind of him and Williams had like interchangeable roles in some of those looks. And so this is a guy that has a unique skill set. He dropped a ton when he was playing for the Rams even though he has a defensive end body. And so again, all of these different things that the Bills probably wanted to be on defense coming into the year that we have not necessarily seen from them fell into place against a Chiefs offense that had been playing lights out over the past four weeks, which I don’t want to make light of Ho’s injury, but we joked about it going into this game that one, like when two things go right for the Bills, now another guy’s jogging off because something happened. It sucks that it it was such a bummer to see that. And that brief glimpse that we got of Hoy in this defense was really really fun. Carolina and and most of this game as well. Let’s talk about the Bills offense in this game because again several like really nice moments the the the group them playing exactly how you want to see them play uh when they’re playing at their best. And so the three touchdown drives I mean you can just go through like what you want to see from this team on those plays. But the touchdown to Concaid the 23 y the Chiefs are in man. He knows it and so he’s attacking Drew Tranquil on the on that corner route to Concaid out of the number three spot. It’s an easy decision. It’s a great throw. That’s the first touchdown. On the second touchdown drive, they hit Concaid for a 47 y simulated pressure. They’re playing cover two behind it. And this is again, you talked about the lack of speed kind of showing up and having not that much space within the offense for the Bills to work. Curtis Samuel is running straight down the middle of the field against cover two. He yanks out the pole runner and both safeties. Concincade’s coming across. Josh has all day and he fights Concaid for 47 yards. And then my favorite sequence from them all day offensively. The third touchdown drive that they had. They come out in 22 personnel. They get a 16-yd chunk to James Cook to kick off that drive. It’s beautiful. They have Jackson Hall is slicing across the formation. He picks off Tranquil and then Reggie Gilliam leads up on Nick Bolton for 16 yards. And then on that same drive, they’re in 22 personnel. It’s play action. They sneak. Dawson knocks up the right sideline for 30 yards. Josh finishes it off with a tush push. It’s 21-10. It’s like there it is. Like th this is Buffalo Bills football at its best. And we got to see every aspect of it today. I would have fallen for that [ __ ] Hook, line, and sinker. Like that was so beautifully set up. And like we talked about what they were doing with 22 personnel. And if you go back and watch that, you can see the whole second and third level of the Chiefs defense collectively realize, oh [ __ ] because like cuz you watch the Bills and you’re like, “Okay, this is what they’re going to do. They’re going to try to big boy us.” Uh, it was chef’s kiss. The fact that I think I think Josh had six explosive passes passes in this game and four of them went to their tight ends. Amazing. Which that’s what we were joking about kind of coming into the week. It’s like I don’t know if you can really have the explosive parts of your offense be your tight ends. And in this game, it absolutely was true. And they they schemed it up really well. You know, the first deep over that you mentioned to Concaid, that was a really good shot. And Josh had all day again in the pocket. I thought they did a really good job picking that up. The 22 personnel shot down the sideline to Haw is just like them setting up both tight ends into the boundary and then doing like a zone fake into that side. It’s so easy as a defender to get influenced into biting onto that. And so them doing that like you have the fullback like fake leading for him too. It’s just it’s an easy way to get I think it was Jaylen Watson maybe it was the corner. He gets pulled down and he’s like oh no I’ve got to run up the sideline and he’s just a little bit too late. So, I thought that that was really impressive. Um, there was another throw, the Elijah Moore, the throw that he makes to Elijah Moore. They’re in like tight trips left and so Kansas City, they love to do this. Steve Smagnolo, if he knows you’re in a tight formation, he’s going to blitz it. That’s what he loves to do. And so, they fire the nickel. The problem is if you fire the nickel, some safety probably has to replace that. And so, they bring the safety down, Josh knows where the void is, makes the throw to Elijah Moore. just like them being able to pick on them schematically down the field in this game when they’re trying to bring some of that pressure I thought was you have to do that against Spags and they did it really well. I the only thing I wonder and the only thing I worry about if I’m a Bills fan or if I’m just watching the Bills performance in this game is they kind of threw everything they had at them defensively in this game specifically. I totally get it after what they had done to them in the playoffs last year and after all the issues that they’ve had with them in these big moments over the last few years. I can understand being like we are going to unleash the game plan we think is going to work. My I I just hope if I’m a Bills fan if these two teams play again they have another set of answers for the Chiefs offense because I think they found the perfect answer today and they deserve a lot of credit for that. Part of me doesn’t want to be the smartass that dismisses this and like it’s such an impressive performance and he’s the reigning MVP so obviously we know he’s capable of it but like Josh was so masterful just across everything in this game. It’s an incredibly impressive win. It it matters to be able to beat the Chiefs. But that like there is the part of you that’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, we know how this goes.” This is five straight years. This is five straight years that they’ve done this in the regular season. And they’ve gotten the better of Mahomes. Like I mean, not a career worst success rate or I think this is the first time since 2020 that Mahomes has been like pressured on the majority of his dropbacks in in a regular season game. So this stuff matters, but it’s okay to have that in the back of your mind because we got a lot of data about it. I think what’s most important is realizing that the defense is this sort of gear, even if it took a lot pulling a lot of very specific levers and really playing in some of the extremes and the way that they approach the Chiefs offense today. It is really nice to see the Bills defense put together a performance like this, especially again when you’re folding in some of the new elements of what this group is compared to what they were last year. I’m really not trying to be glib and I look, football is a violent game with a 100% injury rate, but and and the Bills don’t even control the division right now. Obviously, they lost to the Patriots, but you got to find a way to have Bosa available when you get to January. Like, you just I I don’t know. Like, good luck to Shawn McDerman and those guys for juggling that, but you got to be able to lean on that when you get to the playoffs. I I think you saw you saw the type of difference it can make in a game like this. We talked about it on the previous show. The Chiefs are now five and four. They’re two games back in the division. You know, I still think I’d pick them to win the AFC West based on how well they’re playing and, you know, some of the offensive struggles the Broncos continue to have. And the Broncos are seven-2. Their defense is great. But in the long run, I still think I feel best about this Chiefs team. I don’t think I’m saying anything crazy by throwing that out there. But the fact that the Chiefs are now two games back in the division, nine games into the season, just not a place we’re used to seeing this team. Even when they’ve been frustrating and a little bit boring on offense, they won like 15 games that year. Yeah. We still just wanted we just wanted the 15 wins to look good. Yes. And the the the offense looks better. They’re just further back in the standings than we’re used to. We’re not here to preview week 10, but you know who’s up next, right? After their buy, Denver in week 11. Yeah, week 11. That’s great. And so they they have not played yet, right? So they have two more games against the Broncos. They have not played the Broncos yet. Yeah, they do have their buy. So it’s not even week 10. week 11 they go to Denver. So that’s uh yeah under understatement but that’s a big one. We will have that on the radar. All right let’s get to some of the other performances that jumped out to us this week. It is time for you have my attention. Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. Now you have my attention. The Pittsburgh Steelers knock off the Indianapolis Colts 27 to 20. Colts finished this game with six turnovers. They had four turnovers up to this point in the season before this game kicked off. Daniel Jones had as many interceptions today as he had in his first eight weeks combined. The Steelers had five sacks in this game. The Colts had been sacked nine times in the eight weeks prior to this game. And so a very outofch character performance for the Indianapolis Colts offense and the Steelers deserve a lot of credit for pushing them to that place. The Steelers defense and the Steelers front in particular, you guys have our attention. This was a game when those guys make their plays, that defense can look fine. And what’s funny is like the Colts like success rate was really not that bad. They didn’t get the run game going in the same way that they typically would, but like by the end of the game, the passing success rate was fine. And like Daniel Jones actually did battle for a lot of the game. It was just a lot of these turnovers they did a really good job of of forcing and some of them were like a little bit fluky and weird. Like one they’re trying to throw an RPO to the left side. I think it was Jones’s It was in the late third quarter. I don’t remember which interception this was. He threw a number of them, but they were trying to RPO throw a left hitch to the left side. Pton Wilson jumps like eight feet in the air, gets a hand on it, and I think Jack Sory comes out with it. That one’s a little bit unlucky. The interception he throws to Wilson earlier, I wouldn’t call it unlucky, but I thought it was interesting. So I So very early on in the play, they motion a player to the left and Jaylen Ramsey runs with him. So Daniel Jones is like, “Ah, I’m getting man coverage.” I think it was man coverage. Well, that’s it was man coverage. And so he’s trying to throw a little like whip route to I forget. I think it was Josh Downs on the right hand side and Peyton Wilson is the linebacker to that side. He should be flying down to Jonathan Taylor coming out of the back field. But Jonathan Taylor is a little late coming out of the back field. He’s chipping TJ Watt. Yes, exactly. He’s chipping TJ Watt. He’s late coming out. So Wilson isn’t sprinting out to the flat the way that Daniel Jones might think he would be. And so he’s a little bit late. He’s sitting there. Wilson has eyes on the quarterback, realizes he’s about to trigger, just tries to find where the ball’s going to go and sits in front of it. And so that was just like not unlucky, but just such like a funny circumstance of Jones thought he was getting something and Wilson just made a really really good play on it. Yeah, I he never I never picks him up like he never sees Pton Wilson. In his mind, he’s gone already. He’s coming left to right. He assumes that Pton Wilson is in the flat with Jonathan Taylor. He never accounts for him. throws it right to him and then I mean the play of the game though is not none none of the interceptions. The strip sack that TJ Watt has with about 11 minutes left in the second quarter. The Colts are up seven to nothing at that point early in the second quarter. They’re on the plus 38. It’s first and 10 when TJ Watt makes that play. So I mean he just beats the right tackle around the corner and goes for the ball. And that is a game swinging play because instead of the Colts potentially punching that thing in for 14 nothing, it is 7 nothing with the Steelers having the ball. The next play, this is just kind of like the way the game goes. The next play, Aaron Rogers throws the ball to Kenny Gainwell. It gets blown up in the back field for what should be a one-yard loss. Neville Gallamore gets dinged for a 15yd face mask penalty and then the Steelers go down and score. So, in a lot of different ways, things it it was uh coming up Steelers a lot a lot today over the course of this game. I’m glad you pointed that out because again, what there’s eight games on in the early window. You’re doing your best to prioritize based on what are the best matchups. And the Colts first drive, Steelers go three and out. Colts go 13 plays, convert two fourth downs. It looked like a soul stealing sort of situation where you’re like, “Yep, here here go the Colts. They’re for real. They’re going to march all day on this Pittsburgh offense. Second drive is 14 plays. They ran 27 plays on their first two possessions. Watt strips Daniel Jones. I think the Colts next four possessions went for less snaps than their first two. Like that changed everything. And from there you’re going three and out. Daniel Jones is throwing uncharacteristic interceptions. But the way this thing started, I was sort of like, “Okay, is it time to move Steelers, Colts to the back burner because the Steelers can’t do anything with these guys?” And then all of a sudden, the whole game changed. When even the first drive was funny, too, cuz again, they’re just moving the ball. They’re just mowing him down on this first drive. And the only reason it st kind of stalls out at the end is uh Cam Hayward gets his hand on the ball twice inside the red zone, which like he’s going to do that, but in my mind, I was like, “Ah, the Colts moved the ball pretty well. Like they’ll this that was a little weird like stalling out. they’ll be fine. And I just thought that they were going to be able to continue to to get down into that level of the field for most of the game. And they just because of all the turnovers, all the sacks, they’ve really really struggled to do that. Yeah, the turnovers were one thing, right? I mean, turn the ball over six times, can be hard to win any game, but I think that the consistent pressure was also worth mentioning. The Colts offensive line had been playing at a top five rate, like one of the best offensive lines in football for a good majority of this season, and they got pushed around today in a way that they have not for a good chunk of the year. I mean, the sack that Alex Highmith gets with early in the third quarter, it’s on a first and 10. He beats Bernard Raymond around the corner. Jones is at like 10 and a half yards on that play. And so, like, you could put a little bit of that on the quarterback as Ryman’s trying to run him by, but Highmith gets the corner. That’s a sack. Benton, Keo Benton hooks Gonalves early in the fourth quarter on just like he’s lined up as a three technique over the right guard. He wins. Immediately gets the sack. Cam Hayward beats Gonalves on a sack. uh later on a third or excuse me on a third and nine later in the drive to disrupt a throw. Highmith turns a corner again on Ryman in the fourth quarter. And so everybody was getting in on this. Everybody every single member of the Steelers front had their moment as a pass rusher today. And for the most part that just hasn’t happened against this Colts offensive line all year. And incredibly efficient too. So five sacks and two picks on 18 pressures today. So, like every other time you get pressure on Daniel Jones, like a a havoc play is happening. Like that that looked like the Steelers front that that can take over games and be the reason why the Steelers are a meaningful playoff team. Like TJ Watt, maybe that’s the the game that that changed the flow or the play that changed the flow. But Heismith looked incredible, dude. Like Bernard Raymond had a rough day at the office. I think Highmith had two sacks and a forced fumble on on four pressures just like making the most of your opportunities and that was kind of the case for everybody. And this to me was like obviously the pass rush in in the front plays really well. This was also the first time I watched the Steelers defense and felt like they were closing windows and like actually driving on stuff and kind of knew what they were getting from the offense. And that applies to everybody. Like I think Joey Porter had played a pretty decent game, but a lot of the DBs I think were closing a lot of windows. One of the most impressive points to me was in the second quarter there was about three and a half minutes left. It’s a third and three. They drop Alex Heismith. Yeah, that was to me that was the best play of the game from the defense. It It was incredible. I thought it was one of the like I I don’t know. I thought it was maybe one of the safeties or something, but they drop Alex Heismith from his edge spot. They drop him into the boundary as the hook player and he just makes an play on like a little sit spot route that Josh Dot and he Yes, he almost picks it off. Like I I think if he was more accustomed to being that position, maybe he does pick it off. But just like that, I thought to me was like a microcosm of like, okay, if the Steelers defense can actually like they feel like they know what they’re getting from the offense, they can close on stuff, they have some talented guys. It’s just I’ve rarely felt that from them. This this and on that play on that third and three that you’re describing where Alex Hman nearly picks that ball off, they bring a simulated pressure the Steelers do with Brandon Eckles the nickel coming through I think like the left B gap, but they’re only rushing four. The Steelers last season, this is a stat we’ve brought up a bunch of different times, they were dead last in the NFL when unblocked pressures last year. Like the Steelers are not sending a lot of funky pressures where you don’t know where guys are coming from and getting unblocked guys getting to the quarterback. And so them doing it in that situation, like it’s just not the sort of wrinkle you often see from this team. And so you combine that with the front just consistently winning in the way that you can and you get sort of out of a sort of out of character performance from the Steelers defense given how much they’ve been struggling over the last few games and out of character for 2025 Daniel Jones. He looked so uncomfortable like from from that first strip sack onward just like it looked like when he was dropping back it’s like okay where’s where’s the breakdown coming from? Where’s the pressure coming from? and it just it felt like it affected the whole thing on offense. Not a ton I think to report about what the Steelers did in this game. I think on that third down on the the drive after the Watt fumble, a couple really nice conversions for Calvin Austin on third down. He’s been a nice little weapon for them and sort of those like spaceoriented uh deployments on third down. He’s I think he’s like one of the more explosive players and so seeing him get involved is nice. And then my favorite stretch uh the entire game for the Steelers offense, they’re in jumbo late in the third quarter and they run Darnell Washington on like a rail route down the right sideline, hit him for 11 yards. And on the same drive, they’re in 13 personnel. They line up Darnell Washington as the isolated exceiver on the left side and he runs a slant to get them inside the five yard line. So them highlighting and really, you know, focusing their game plan on Darnell Washington in some of these stretches, it might be my favorite version of the Steelers offense. I don’t, you could argue with the veracity of it, but I’m enjoying it from an entertainment perspective. I just love what a week- toeek league the NFL is because I feel like it’s it’s been two or three weeks now where the insider reports coming out are about the Steelers hunting for another receiver at the trade deadline. And for like three weeks, I see that and I’m like, who gives a [ __ ] about that? Like, fix the defense. Who cares who you’re throwing the ball to? And now, if the defense can do this against the most efficient offense in the NFL, I’m like, all right, yeah, maybe we should go get another wide receiver in Pittsburgh. Are you worried at all about the Colts after a game like this or just one of those like sometimes you just have a tough day? The the only thing that I would say that not worries me, but their so their worst games to me or at least some of their worst moments have been against the Broncos, have been against the Rams and against the Steelers front playing like this. When fronts can really get after them, you start to see some of it fall apart for them. But like that’s true. That’s true for just about anybody. So I’m like, I don’t know how much that actually makes me feel a whole lot differently. My counter to that would be, and I know the end of the Denver game was goofy. They could have lost it just as easily as they won it. But they scored 29 points against Denver and Jones did not look bothered. They they should have beaten the Rams. Like some goofy swings go against them in that game. They still scored. They scored 20, but it should have been 27 cuz the AD Mitchell thing. This is this is just this is a burn the tape game for me where I’m just like we have a lot of evidence that you can do this and that this stuff doesn’t bother Daniel Jones. I mean, I looked this up, too. On third and fourth down, uh, combined, they were 11 of 19 on the day, and they were two of two in the red zone. I think they’re fine. And I think this is just a case of a bunch of the wrong [ __ ] going against you and snowballing. What I’ll say about just like the big picture implications of this game, it’s a huge game for the Steelers because if you’re looking at the schedule, this seems like it might be a loss for Pittsburgh given how the Colts were playing and given how the Steelers were playing. And so for the Steelers to steal one here and now be sitting there at five and three, I mean, and when we’re looking at like wildcard implications deeper into the year, this is a potentially huge win that looked like a loss when we were going into week nine, considering what the teams had been up to this point. Mhm. I will say too, I I don’t remember if we brought this up in the preview, but I’m not going to go as far as to say it’s a game the Colts couldn’t afford to lose. They were seven and one going in, but the Chiefs are on the horizon. They’re the only division games they’ve played are against the Titans. So, two against the Texans, two against the Jags. The AFC South is a wacky division anyway. This, you know, I think you still would like to be stacking wins even if you are seven and one because I just I think it’s I think it’s going to look messier for the Colts in the back half of the season than it has so far. Let’s get to our next one here. The Minnesota Vikings knock off the Detroit Lions 27-24 in JJ McCarthy’s return. spent a lot of time this week talking about what we could expect from JJ McCarthy, what the JJ McCarthy experience had meant up to this point, but we took a lot of time on the preview show pointing out that the Vikings roster outside of the quarterback had not played the way this team was supposed to play heading into this season. This was supposed to be a complete team from top to bottom. And based on some of the pregame reports, I guess that they had a meeting, a team meeting last night and some of the leaders on that Vikings roster essentially got up in front of everybody and said the same thing. Like it’s time for us to play like the team we know we can be independent of what we get from the quarterback. And we could talk about the JJ McCarthy aspect of all of this, but the way the defense played, the way the entire roster played now that the offensive line is back healthy, that to me is what stuck out is that the Vikings felt like the team we thought they could be heading into the year. And that leads to a very big win over the Lions. And so, not just JJ McCarthy, every aspect top to bottom of this Vikings team after that win today. You guys have my attention. Th this to me was like the run game actually working was a huge part of it for me. They won. This is the big thing to me. They won on both sides of the trenches in this which was How often does that happen against the Lions? One one how often does that happen against the Lions? And like how often does that happen for this version of the Vikings? like maybe one or two weeks early in the season, they got some of that with their offensive line, but for the most part, this has been like their fronts, both of the fronts that they paid for have not been as good as I think that they wanted them to be. And so, I thought the run game today, one, it wasn’t just that it was effective, is that it was very, it was varied. Like, they did a lot of interesting pulling stuff. They hit some basic zone stuff. Uh they had an awesome duo run for Jordan Mason towards the end of the game like with about four minutes left in the fourth quarter which was the ultimate like duo is about like can we get this to bounce and make the corner tackle and he just stiff arms Terry and Arnold into the ground. Um, and so they they just the fact that they brought kind of like you’re saying, can we just play like the team we’re supposed to be where they they thought they bought attitude this offseason with trying to invest in the trenches and I think in this game you finally saw some of that and so for the run game to come along for both of their star receivers to play the way that they played and then for the defensive front to like the Lions offensive line really struggled with a lot of the like stunts and just like even against the run uh primarily against the run I thought they a lot of the stunts against the run and then in the passing game. All of the twists in games they ran specifically over the center. I mean, almost all of those sacks were on stuff like that. What was your stat about the Lions rushing success rate? 25% designed rush success rate for the Lions today. That is the worst performance of any Lions game in the past three seasons. And it felt like that when you went back and watched it. That kind of says it for me. And yeah, we’ll we’ll talk about JJ McCarthy. I thought it was a really impressive No, incredibly impressive considering it’s on the road. It’s in Detroit. He made some fantastic plays, but whipping the Lion’s ass up front was the story of the game. You told me that at some point on Sunday evening, and I went back and looked just cuz I was curious, heading into this game, the Lions were averaging 4.8 yards per carry and a 39% success rate just on first down. And on uh against the Vikings, it was 3.2 yards per carry and a 22% success rate on first down. So, like your your go-to fast ball at the start of any drive or at the start of any new series just wasn’t there in this game. And it it looked like it like they the Lions offense just looked completely handicapped. And then you combine that with Jared Goff either a being a guy you can pressure and sack when like you know cuz he’s not overly mobile or he just looked inaccurate after a certain point. 18% of his throws were offtarget in this game per PFF, which is double his number from seven of their eight games. So like he looked uncomfortable and they couldn’t run the ball. Like that was that was the big story of this game for me. The run defense, it was a little bit of everything. You mentioned some of the stunts and that absolutely played a part in this. But a lot of the one-on-one matchups in this game were being won by the Lion by the Vikings front players consistently. I mean on on the second drive for the Lions, Jaylen Redmond stands up Leaporta in the hole dri he trips up Gibbs for a negative two for loss of two. Four minutes left, four and a half minutes left in the second quarter. Hardgrave hops from the A gap into the B gap. He drops Gibbs for a two- yard loss. 12:30 left in the third quarter. Grard stands up Leaporta at the line of scrimmage to kind of cave in that side. Hargrave tracks it down from the backside for a two-y gain. 950 left in the fourth quarter. They send a puller at Van Ginkle. He just caves in that side of it. No gain for Montgomery. So, it’s a combination of some stunts, some guys hopping out of gaps, but also just winning one-on-one at the point of attack consistently. And I think you felt Van Ginkle back in the lineup in this game on plays like that. But then the pass rush plan to me is really where you felt all the layers of what this team can be. So you mentioned 47 a.5% pressure rate for the Vikings in this game today perg just not something you typically see against the Lions and what you mentioned about them attacking the center specifically that thought they did a great job in this game not necessarily blitzing a lot but they kept dropping both edges and then when they would drop both edges what would happen is the defensive tackles or the five techniques on either side would get picked up by both the guard and the tackle and so you had essentially twoon- ons where you’re wasting a player consistently. And then they kept doing all these cross dogs with the linebackers where they’d have one linebacker on one one side of the center cross the center’s face and then they had the essentially they were picking on the back and the center in those moments because the guards and the tackles were consistently locked up on those defensive tackles. And so it wasn’t necessarily a lot of blitzing. I think it was just a really good plan of how to isolate and attack like the weakest part of what that Lions pass protection group looks like with Graham Glascow in the middle and consistently they’re getting after people whether it was Blake Cashman, Eric Wilson. Wilson had a fantastic game. I’m like five or six different levels in this game. And so I just loved the individual performances and winning in these one-on- ones, especially in the run game, combined with a very welldevised plan of attack to get after the quarterback that wasn’t necessarily about sending a bunch of extra bodies at the problem. And they did all the crossog stuff in so many different ways. It was really cool to see like on one of the first ones with about four minutes left in the first quarter, they have a guy straight over the center and then cross dog the linebackers back over that. And later on that drive, they don’t have anyone over the center or over any of the guards or anything, but again, they have guys who are a little bit further out, you know, fanned out like five techniques that can occupy the guards, occupy the tackles that way, and then they fire the cross dog. Both the linebackers just over the center. Those guys can’t figure it out again. And so they just found so many different ways to attack the center and really make Gibbs one, get to the right spot in pass protection, which a couple of times he didn’t. Um, or just like pick up those guys and like handle them. There were a number of times where Gibbs got to the right spot and like got two hands on Eric Wilson or Blake Castron, whoever it was, and he just wasn’t able to hold up and got caved into golf. And as you said, Dave, he’s not the most mobile guy. And so if you can cave the pocket in a little bit, you’re probably going to be able to make those plays. Wilson was great as a pass rusher in this game. He dropped Gibbs for a loss on a screen 10. Uh he did a fantastic job of sticking with Montgomery on a wheel route out of the back field in the third quarter. He comes up with his own sack at the end of the third quarter where Gibbs does actually get hands on him. he runs right through him and finishes off the play. And so Wilson really stood out along with all the other guys up front. And then on think we can also just take this to the Vikings offense in this game as well because along with what we saw from the defense, there were a lot of great individual performances on the offense even before we take into account what the quarterback did in this game. Yeah, I thought I mean literally on is it the first touchdown they scored where Justin Jefferson just like plucks the like I just and that’s a really good throw too, but like that’s the only spot that ball can be and JJ just reaching that out for that. Like he’s he just has such a special it just seems like it just it’s too easy for him sometimes. It feels like let’s talk about it that it’s so funny how okay it’s week nine. It’s November 2nd. We’re past Halloween. We’ve seen the Vikings get beat to [ __ ] and play some unfortunate football at times this season and here we are entering the back half of the year and this game and I don’t want to overreact to a small sample size but this game against a team that we view as a Super Bowl contender was the Vikings like the idealized version of the Vikings that we pitched in the preseason. Like if everything else is that good, all JJ McCarthy had to do was make like four or five nice plays. And that’s exactly what he did. This was the exact formula the Vikings were supposed to be able to follow to be a good team this year. Like if if we were arguing about the Vikings as a contender before the season started. This is this is what it would have looked like. And I can’t help like during the game I was sitting there thinking like man amazing that four out of the five offensive linemen on the Vikings O line are healthy and the quarterback is a very good athlete and it looks like it makes a hell of a lot of difference. Not to not to talk too much trash on Carson Wentz, but after so many weeks of him gutting through that injury and everything just looking slow, difficult, and painful, it was really cool to see just a young athletic guy like the the touchdown to TJ Hawinson where he just ran out, avoided pressure, and just slang it back across his body and and Hawinson was just sort of, you know, sitting in the in the hole in the zone. like it’s a fairly straightforward play, but just an exciting play for a guy with athleticism to make. And I was like, ah, that has definitely been missing from this offense. And that’s a play where the athleticism comes into play. He has the scramble touchdown later in the game. And so you see multiple different moments. The angle Alex Analone takes on that play, by the way, is like kind of criminal, but it’s still pretty impressive that JJ does have that gear to his ear. So you saw a little bit of athleticism in a couple of those plays and then he makes a handful of throws and the 31 yard he hits to Addison in the first quarter on that corner route against Arthur Mlette. That’s a really nice throw. And then my favorite throw of his in the entire game about seven and a half minutes left in the third quarter. He rips a deep out to Jordan Addison. He can throw that ball. And then there was another deep out to Justin Jefferson at some point in the game. The route Justin Jefferson runs on that deep out that he that he throws on to the right side. slowing it down. It It’s just a reminder that no one in the world moves like Justin Jefferson. Like, he’s selling the post and the way that the corner has to react. And when you slow down watching Justin Jefferson move, the length of his legs as he’s eating up all that space, but the ability to still change direction, like the route he runs on that play, if you guys have access to the All 22, I encourage you to go watch it. It’s just like a deep out route to the right side. I think in the second half of the game, no one, very few players in the league would be asked to run that route because it doesn’t really make sense like what he’s being asked to do on that play, but he’s Justin Jefferson and so they can do that. So, like we said, it’s four or five like big-time throws from JJ McCarthy in this game. And that’s not to diminish his role in all of this. That’s exactly what this was supposed to be. JJ McCarthy was supposed to have to make four or five throws a game because the rest of this roster was good enough to do a lot of the heavy lifting. And that’s exactly what happened today, which and again, I don’t want to overreact to to one game. It’s a small sample size, but I found myself thinking about the same conversation we had about the Chargers where you sort of get a snapshot of them at their worst in that Giants game and it’s hard to shake. And the like the crappy versions of the Vikings that we’ve seen have been beat to [ __ ] for the most part. Like JJ played his early games without Darasaw. you lose all of the off, you know, you lose everybody on the offensive line at one point. Carson Wentz is gutting through an injury that ended his season prematurely. And I’m I’m not saying that the Vikings are just going to roll from this point on. But it is interesting to me that with the with everybody relatively healthy and operating on a higher level, this looked exactly like the team that we thought it might be in the best version of itself. Are we worried at all about how bad the bad plays were for JJ McCarthy? Like outside of the three or four throws, he tried to throw two interceptions on the same drive. Yeah, like he tried to throw two interceptions on the same drive. Is successful in doing so by the end. Obviously, he had a 30% drop success rate in this game, which was I think the worst on the day outside of Bo Knicks against the Texans, which we will talk about in a little bit. Average for context is about 44%. Against the Blitz, he was three for seven, got sacked one time, only had one successful drop back. like he there were a couple times which I’m not sure these were all his fault but him and the running backs were like going the wrong way on fakes and handoffs which I thought was weird a number of times. So I don’t know if that’s just a miscommunication thing. I don’t know if it was the back that was messing those up, but I thought that was really weird. And so that on top of like remember earlier in the season they were having like communication problems getting stuff in. Just a lot of like I know they win this game but sometimes the win feels like the Men in Black just like mind eraser and I’m just a little bit worried we’re Yeah. I mean the the result maybe clouds some of the bad parts. I I completely agree with that. But that’s who J.J McCarthy was supposed to be. The guy’s like 23 years old. He barely faced adversity in college. They barely asked him to do anything in college. And so like, yeah, all that stuff is bound to happen. But the whole point was that the rest of the Vikings roster could lift him up. And against in one game against a very good opponent, that’s exactly what happened. Yeah, I it’s this is kind of just what I expect from JJ McCarthy at this point. Like him not playing well against a defense that while banged up in the secondary has still been very very good this year. That’s not surprising. Like my frustration with the Vikings up to this point and the conversation we had in the previous show is that every other aspect of what we had been promised with the Vikings had not come to fruition. And so to see that happen today, even if the quarterback didn’t play well, I don’t really expect him to play well at this point. and they should be able to win even when he’s not playing that well. And that’s exactly what happened today. That’s a good point. The the gambit was that they could win even if he did just this. And they did. If you promise me that Jonathan Allen and Jayvon Hardgrave are going to play like this the rest of the time, I’ll take whatever and and Justin Jefferson’s going to do his thing and Jordan Addison’s going to be there and the offense getting Aaron Jones back. You felt Aaron Jones in this game. If you promise me those performances from the rest of the roster on a regular basis, I’ll live with whatever growing pains JJ McCarthy is going to go through. My favorite, my two favorite plays, two of my favorite plays in this game were from guys that have been banged up for a good chunk of the season for the Vikings. And you felt the difference with them in the game today. There was a 31 yard run. It was a run to Aaron Jones at some point in this game. It was in the second quarter. the Vikings were in like a splitback look and it I want to say it was probably technically an RPO where they fake the run to Mason out of that splitback look and then they have Aaron Jones come on a little swing behind it and in rhythm JJ finds him for what turns into a running play cuz it’s backwards but it’s a 31 yardd gain around the left sideline so even that element of being able to throw the ball to Aaron Jones which they did it plenty of times today for nice chunk gains you felt that and then the play before the blocked field goal in this game. I I’m I’d be really curious to ask somebody on the Vikings defensive staff. It was actually designed this way. Van Ginkle is on the left side and he does an inside spin move coming back inside and picks the guard is part and Redmond loops around and Redmond actually finishes off the sack before the block field goal. If it’s designed that way where it’s supposed to be a stunt, it was as beautiful as it possibly could have been. Part of me thinks it just happened to work out that way. That’s the beauty of football. And but that’s the thing about having Van Ginkle back in the lineup. He’s just this shitster. Like that’s having like a chaos creator like that. You do feel the difference. I love the idea of you asking somebody on the Viking staff and they’re just like, “Yes, it all went according to our plan.” Most of the time if you’re asking guys like privately, they will tell you if it was or was not part of the plan. But I’m actually curious about that play because the timing of it married up beautifully. And so a lot of stuff married up beautifully for the Vikings today. It was nice to see them reach that gear even with a quarterback looking uneven, which I think he’s going to look for a good majority of this season, even when things are clicking for this team overall. All right, those are the good conversations that we’re going to have today. Let’s get to the other side of things. It is time for what the [ __ ] what the what the what? Let’s start the only place this can start and that is with the Green Bay Packers somehow losing to the Carolina Panthers 16 to13. What do you have to say for yourself? I I hate this team, man. I I joked here’s here’s the problem I have with this team. I think I said this to you at some point in the third quarter. Every time you look up at the screen, the Packers are on the opposing 35 yd line. They are also never winning the game convincingly. I don’t understand. They didn’t win the game at all. But they’re always in position to allow games to go like that at the very end because I don’t know. They just can never get it over the line once they get into it’s a very they’re a very frustrating offense for a number of reasons. Understatement of the freaking year. I I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know where to start with Green Bay. And that’s like watching I think we we did this last time the Packers pissed us off where I watch the game back and I’m just like what what exactly is the culprit other than freaking red zone turnovers? Oh, I think that’s the culprit. I I think go we can if you want to we can go through the sequences that the Packers offense had while in plus territory in this game because there are like seven of them that are just mindnumbingly stupid. Uh, do we want to start with the Savon Williams fumble? That one was That’s a great tone setter for a frustrating game. Like that one to me. And two, I think this actually in a lot of ways, the whole thing paints the picture of what the Packers offense would be and what their issues are. They’re marching on this drive, by the way. They they’re getting into plus territory. It’s a it’s a pretty solid drive for them. Doing nothing crazy, but they’re moving the ball. They get under center. I think it’s a first and 10. They’ve got two receivers out to the left hand side. Jordan Love, they he throws the alert screen. They have a called run play and he throws the little bubble out to Savon Williams. Savon Williams takes it. I think it’s Romeo Dobs in front of him as the blocker. Gets blown up and so Savon Williams kind of gets like stuck and gets held up. Panthers defender comes and punches the ball out. That to me is like so descriptive of the Packers cuz one, they’re starting to move the ball. It’s looking like a good drive and then they get into this play where the quarterback has an option. We can be in a run call or we can be in a pass call. He makes his decision because the whole offense is built on like efficiency with allowing Jordan Love to have a lot of that pre- snap control and then he gives it to a skilled player who is not all that great and then makes a mistake and then there goes there goes that drive and that was one of like five botched red zone drives in them for them in this game. In the second quarter they have a second and six on the 14 yd line. Elton Jenkins has like a botched snap that turns into a false start to make it second and 10. On the next play, Tershan Wharton goes speed to power on Jordan Morgan. Gets into the back field. Tough game for him, by the way. Love, not a great game for Jordan Morgan. Love has the checkdown if he wants it on that play. Chooses not to throw it. Takes a sack. Drive destroyed. 21 seconds in the second quarter. Love has a fairly clean pocket on this play. I think it was a third down. Oh, no, excuse me. It was a second down. He has a clean pocket on second down. you if you watch the all 22 from the end zone, you see Romeo Dobs coming open on the second inb breakaker after Watson clears it out. For some reason, Jordan Love decides this clean pocket is not good enough for me. Bails out. That play is destroyed. I’m going to go lawyer mode on that drive by the way. And then on third and six, he tries to find Dobs in the back of the end zone. JC Horn, great coverage. Incompletion, another field goal. We We can keep going, but like that’s exactly what this game felt like. and just it was a little bit of everything. It’s like all right, it’s it’s terrible protection from the uh from the right guard on this play, but also like he refuses to throw the check down. It’s he’s has an open receiver on second down, bails from a clean pocket, and now it’s third down, it’s an incompletion, and it’s another field goal. There’s just so many like layers to the frustrating aspects of the offense in this game that there’s not just really one thing you can point to. Okay. So, what I said when I was going to go lawyer mode on that drive, please that specific play, I’m not going to defend him where he bail where it’s 21 seconds left, he bails out of the pocket. That’s not a good play by him. That’s in the two-minute though. Earlier in that drive, he pops an insane route to Romeo Dobs over the middle like right over Trevan Merrick who had rolled down. That’s a really, really good play. Right after that, he gets pressured a little bit, flips out a check down to I think it was uh Brooks down the left hand side. Then he hits another short throw to move them inside of the 10. And then he has that I think right after that is the the play where he does not hang in the pocket the way he probably should misses that throw and then on the throw to dos at the back of the end zone to JC Horn. This is a great play by JC by gives him that chance. I’m not saying you’re No, that one I’m not saying you’re like punishing him. I’m not criticizing him for that. The third and six play never should have happened because he should have thrown the ball to Romeo Dobs on second down for a touchdown. I agree with that. I think my defensive love is like I think he just has to be more perfect than we are leading on. I think we’re more used to this offense having more juice to it. He really does have Do you want to go into lawyer mode on the interception he threw in the middle of the third quarter? You don’t I would love to hear your defense interception. No, but the one he almost throws to uh when he’s trying to throw it to Dobs in the red zone. That one I would defend. I don’t really care about that one. That’s a fourth down. Who That’s a fourth down. Do like slips in the back of the end zone. That one I couldn’t give a [ __ ] about that. The fourth down. So that happens. If anything, the crime on the interception, by the way, is that he just didn’t throw it far enough on the the one to Merrick. Yeah, throw it farther. Throw it farther past the three DBs that are all It’s an indefensible choice on every single level. It’s a bad choice. The crazy thing about the crazy thing about that play is it was a play action and like eight members of the Panthers defense just didn’t give a [ __ ] about that. Like they they all dropped like Love fakes the the handoff and they all dropped deeper. like nobody bought it at all and everyone was like, “Oh yeah, this is going deep.” And by the way, also he had Romeo Dobs wide ass open on like a deep dig on that play and he absolutely could have fitted him over the linebackers and instead he’s like, “No, [ __ ] it. We’re going.” He doesn’t throw that because he doesn’t know if the corner is going to fall off the post that he’s trying to throw. He’s getting pressure and the corner does not anything. They like it looked like they were playing like they were taking popf fly practice in baseball. The way they all just dropped back. Unbelievable. The fourth and eight that he throws the not interception on that is kind of like a whatever play. The most frustrating part of that sequence is on third and three they throw a swing to Emanuel Wilson that gets blown up for a 5-yard loss. There were two of those moments in this game. He had a third and 10 screen to Matthew Golden on this. This is the most explosive offense in the league. Why are we throwing screen passes on third down? Why I took more issue with Matt Lafleur in this game that h like genuine I think there are a lot of culprits there’s best game but like they he was not that bad. His just couple of errors were very very loud which is kind of always the thing with him. Loud errors matter when I as two touchdown favorite are only as good as they are on a downtodown basis I think because of the way he’s playing right now. the [ __ ] quarterback. Of course they’re Of course they’re only as good as they are if he’s playing well. But they are very very good on a downto- basis because he’s playing to go to go back to what you just brought up. The third and 10 screen to Golden made me want to pull my hair out. Jordan Love threw seven passes behind the line of scrimmage in this game, which is fourth most in the league for the week. You know how many yards they got off of those? 18. Were any of those success? Like how many of those were successful? But it was like two or less like just just wasted plays from one of the most canonarmed like impressive athletically quarterbacks in the league and we’re just throwing plays away with this behind the line of scrimmage crap. It It drives me nuts. I I thought the play calling in this game was very suspect. But I also I don’t think Love was as good as you do. It wasn’t his best game. I’m just saying like I don’t think he was like criminal in this game by any means. He was fine. He wasn’t if he even if he wasn’t criminal, he played a large role in them losing the football game along with the play caller and the offensive line. Everybody pitched in to this Packers offensive performance in the red zone in this game. This is this is kind of taky and I apologize. It’s 11:30 on Sunday night, but this felt like a game where like they’re 13 and a half point favorites and the whole team at least offensively they felt antsy. like they felt like they were trying to play like a two touchdown favorite. Jordan Love was 15 of 17 throwing zero to 10 yards. Like just the Panthers were not interested in contesting that part of the field whatsoever. And yet we’re doing crazy [ __ ] like throwing into triple coverage to Christian Watson for no real reason. Like I just didn’t feel this I just I didn’t get a sense of patience or confidence from the Packers. And maybe part of that, we should mention, maybe part of that is they lose their best player to a torn ACL, unfortunately. I mean, that’s that’s the long-term outlook of this is that like we talked about how he is the most Tucker Craft is out with the torn ACL, but based on all the reports, goes out with a non-cont sort of injury today. We talked about how he’s the most important skill position player on this team. I think that has more to do with the Packers long-term outlook than it does to why they looked like [ __ ] in this game against the Panthers. Can I posit one theory about why they’ve been a little bit uneasy I think this year in general. Cope as hard as you want to. I’m going to cope really hard. Their under center run game sucks. Like it’s not very good. Like they 3.5 yards a carry right now which is 21st in the league and a 37.6 uh success rate which is 23rd in the league. And to me when I think of like what Lafleur’s offense should be, it’s that we should be able to get under center bully teams a little bit, get into our play action stuff. And every now and then they’ll force these shots down the field, but it does not feel to me like their intermediate play action game is always there the way that they want it to be. And I think now, especially if Tucker Craft’s not going to be in the lineup, I think that’s going to be even harder for them to find. So maybe getting Watson back into the fold a little bit more comfortable can help, but it it’s I think that’s why they feel uneasy. Like they can’t tie that together the way that they want. And so they’ve leaned to being a little bit more of this gun team. We’re going to RPO. We’re going to do a lot of pre- snap package plays and stuff like that. going to give the Panthers some credit here because I do think that they made enough plays on offense to win the game and that should be pointed out. Their three like big scoring drives in this game. They were obviously they didn’t light the world on fire offensively, but Bryce Young had some nice moments on those three scoring drives. And then the both of the two touchdown drives, they had beautiful reps of pin pole on the right side where they’re getting the ball out into space with Rico Data. There was a 29 yard on their first touchdown drive. On that drive, Bryce does a really good job of beating the get on the throw to Legget, which the Packers bail into cover two from what would have been like a they was a man look pre- snap. They bail into cover two. Bryce throws a really nice ball to Xavier get. He beats the blitz to Bryson Tmaine on third and nine on that same drive and then Dow scores a touchdown in a little slice design cut back. The second touchdown drive that they had, another beautiful pin pull rep with Yash Nimman dropping Nate Hobbs in space. I don’t think we accounted for the Yash Nimman revenge game here and but it he came up big as a backup right tackle in this game on multiple of those perimeter runs and on the game-winning field goal drive Bryce does a fantastic job making Devonte Wyatt miss in the pocket before coming back to Coker T-Mac cooks Carrington Valentine on the comeback on the left side that Bryce throws on time and then doubt 19 yards to salt it away on another one of those slice plays where they have Williams completely spinning because the tight end that is covering I assume in man coverage slices across the formation. He empties out that side. D goes for 19 yards. They kick the game-winning field goal. And so again, not the best game if you look at the final numbers for the Panthers offense, but they came through in a couple really big high leverage moments. Rico did have the 19 yard that that put them in position to win. But one thing I love about the Panthers is not quite as crazy as the game he had against the Cowboys, but Rico carried the ball 25 times today. Three explosive runs. Like when you play the Panthers, you better pack a lunch cuz they’re just going to they’re going to run the ball. It’s probably not going to pop very often. They’re just going to smash you for five to seven yards at a time and they’re content doing it all the way down the field. And I I love that about him. He’s been really good for them this year. He did a lot of stuff today where it it’s bottled up in the back field and he’s making something miss because he sees a little bit of a crease or he’s really patient. And so it’s been really impressive to watch him with an offensive line that’s been banged up and has played a ton of different combinations this year and they seemingly still get it done on the ground no matter who’s out there and it’s been very impressive. All right, let’s stick in the NFC North and talk about the wildest game of today. The Bears beat the Bengals 47 to 42. Both defenses in this game should be ashamed of themselves. That is why they are a member of this segment today. There are so many stats that we can throw out. The first one I’ll start with 43 plays of 10 plus yards combined in this game. 43 23 for the Bears, 20 for the Bengals. The Bengals in this game finished with 10 completions of 20 plus yards. 10. That has happened four times in the past five seasons combined. Okay. They averaged like eight yards a play and lost the game. Joe Flacco threw for 450 yards and somehow lost the game because Jordan Battle decided that he did not want to tackle Coloulston Lovelin on what should have been at best a play to set up an effort at a game-winning field goal. So, both the Bears and Bengals defenses in this game. What the [ __ ] I I’m disgusted by everything that I watched this game. Like I I pulled up like almost a very similar stat about the 10 plus yards plays. Both teams allowed 10 plus yard plays on 30% or more of their plays. A one in three chance when the team snaps the ball they’re going to get a first down was basically what happened in that game. I have seen I get why you say you’re disgusted and I wouldn’t want to watch this on a regular basis but like getting getting it once every other week get getting it when the Bengals play is fun. And I think my favorite part about it was that it was just the reverse Bengals game from last week. Except the Bengals managed to find a way to lose this one, too. Like last week, they let the Jets do the late two-point conversion turned into upset win. Then they try to turn it on on the Bears and it looked like they’re going to pull it off. Second successful onside kick recovery of the season, by the way. Like the play is essentially dead unless you’re the Chicago Bears, I guess. Like it’s just not supposed to work. And they do all that only to give the lead right back. Like what are the odds that you play essentially the same game twice in a week and come out on on the wrong side of of both comeback attempts? Like it’s ridiculous. The Bengals defense in this game was horrendous again. And I mean just the Jordan Battle had a one really big play in space where he’s coming downhill. I think it was on a nong guy early in the game and you noticed it because it was so out of character for what most of his in space work has been this season. Don’t worry. things found their level over the course of the game. He’s the one that misses the tackle on the Coulson level touchdown, but I mean he took a handful of just awful, awful, disgusting angles again in this game. And the Bears defense was like was no better. You go back and you watch some of those late drives by the Bengals offense in this game and I just it’s embarrassing. Like the the touchdown to Noah Fant with 144 left in the game is embarrassing. Like it’s a rep of cover two. Tmaine Edmonds gets zero depth whatsoever. Noah Fantis runs through the down the middle of the defense wide open for a touchdown. The chunk completion to Higgins uh with 120 left in the fourth quarter. Tyreek Stevenson and Tmaine Edmond Tmaine Edmonds run into each other on that play and they Higgins gets open for a corner out for a chunk gain with 115 left. Chase Brown catches a 15-yd pass where he cooks TJ Edwards in space. absolutely cooks him. And then Yoshas runs wide open past Makoot for a touchdown with 55 seconds left in the game. There’s that sequence on one of the other touchdown drives where Tanner Hudson dusts Tmaine Edmonds on a double move, which is like you’re making $20 million a year to play offball linebacker. Tmaine or Tanner Hudson should not be dusting you on double moves. And your thing is that you’re an athlete. Yes. Tanner thing is not that he’s an athlete. If we want to talk about Jamar Chase and T Higgins and T. Higgins was phenomenal in this game. Fine, that’s great. Those guys are really good players. Tanner Hudson dusting you on double moves for 33 yards. And then on that same drive, Mitch Tinsley cooking Tyreek Stevenson for a huge chunk that sets up another touchdown. That’s the stuff that drives me insane. Like this was not just about Jamar Chase and T. Higgins. This was about the Bears defense looking absolutely haphazard and incompetent for huge chunks of this entire game. Watching you go through this was a treat. I hope you I hope you take that the right way. I don’t wish ill on you. But the other like the fun thing too again like what the Bears were up 41-27 and Termaine Edmonds almost takes a pick back to the house and he’s ruled down by contact and I was thrilled because I was like I won’t have to care about this game. Robert was getting ready to throw the Bears TV on something quote unquote more entertaining or like with a closer finish the game was over. All freaking hell breaks loose in the in the whatever minutes of game time after that was ruled down by contact. I incredible. I really enjoyed the Bears run game today. I don’t think that’s that’s another just just trying to take people behind the curtain. So again, you’re watching eight games at once. Your attention’s everywhere and like every three and a half minutes this afternoon, you just hear Robert go manunga and like you immediately you’re like, “All right, I need to pivot. I need to pivot to the Bears game because Manungai just did something. The run game was incredible with this game. They rushed for 283 yards. They averaged 7.7 yards per carry. They had a 62 and a half rush percent rushing success rate. It was beautiful to watch. And then they still almost lost the game. And I don’t need we this doesn’t need to be like a referendum on Caleb Williams again. This was a weird game. Like just a profoundly weird game. He had a 3.77 second time to throw in this game and it felt like that. There were just very few plays being made in the passing game specifically in rhythm for the Bears offense today. It was a lot of work done on the ground. It was a lot of stuff done kind of in a scattered frantic way deeper into the down. There were a couple moments where it was like, “Okay, this is what you want to see.” There was the throw to level and up the seam at one point and then the throw to level and off play action on the inb breakaker late in the third quarter for 31 yards. Those or excuse me, the throw to level up seem to win the game and then the one to level and off play action late in the third quarter. Those were his two best throws of the game. But there just weren’t that many plays being made in rhythm on time within the offense over the course of the day. The best sequence the offense had the entire game was in the third quarter. They had a chuck down to Manungai for 11 yards. Caleb does a great job of making an off schedule play on that drive where he makes 96 missing space but gets out to his right finds I believe DJ Moore for a chunk gain. They have a screen to Manungai on that drive and then he rips the touchdown on the inb breaker to Coulson Leland. That is like the version of that this offense that you want to see but other than the run game there was not a lot about this offense where it’s like I feel really good about this moving forward. The passing game was much more inconsistent and out of rhythm today than you want to see against a bad defense. Well, it was also weird in that three players who weren’t Caleb Williams threw passes in this game. Cole KT threw one, DJ Moore threw one, and Tyson Beant threw one. Like, it was just a very weird game from that front. Ben Johnson was feeling himself. He This really felt like a game where Ben Johnson was like, I know I can get this defense and was like, let me see. Let’s get some reps on our funny stuff. And I I I genuinely think that like that’s what he went into it thinking. The the passing offense generally I I thought it got better timing wise as the game went on, but the first half was very outside of like a couple of screens, some rollouts. You’re right. Like Caleb just was not settled for whatever reason. And I it started to come together in the second half. Like I thought to me like the most rhythm I saw was uh the t one of the touchdowns he throws to Coulson Lovelin where he’s I isoed on the right hand side. just the rhythm of it’s three-step drop, but just like how smoothly he’s like reading the left side as soon as he takes the snap knows that he’s gonna come back and rip it to to Lovelin. Just seeing a little bit of rhythm there, it’s like, okay, he doesn’t always do that. So, getting a little bit of that on top of the dig out he makes to Lovelin, obviously the one to win the game. At least in the second half, you got some of it, but it was frustrating that for the first half against Ben’s defense that is like the most getable I’ve ever seen, it should look a little bit smoother. It just it fell out of source for a good chunk of the first half. say the throw he makes the level and I mean that’s a terrible play by Jordan Battle. That’s a ridiculously good throw. It’s a beautiful throw in a huge moment because even if he makes the tackle that throw likely setting you up to potentially kick the game-winning field goal and he deserves a lot of credit for what that throw looks like in that moment with the game on the line. Our wonderful producer Scott got us on video reacting to that and I freaked out just at the throw. I like because I have watched a lot of NFL football. I was like, “Oh, that will be the end of the play.” But what a sick throw by Caleb Williams. And then before I knew it, he was in the inel. That’s the state of the Cincinnati Bengals defense for everybody. The Bengals offensive players are starting to lose their minds. Like Chase Brown coming out after the game and saying the quote we have in here is finish the [ __ ] game. Just end it. Just end the [ __ ] game. We I mean it’s at this point like I can understand them slowly just descending into madness. All of them. You usually don’t get that in the middle of the season. Like that’s crazy. I also appreciated Jamar Chase saying, “I’m just gonna stay in my lane. I don’t want a player coming to chew me out about what the f I’m doing.” It’s great. And also, I’m not sure he has to before he like as he was coming off the field before he talked to the to reporters, Jamar also said, “One [ __ ] up.” That’s kind of what it felt like in this game. I just assume whoever had the ball last was going to win and that’s exactly I mean that’s not what happened but it’s kind of what happened. It’s easy to laugh about the craziness of it all and obviously I mean like the you realize the Bengals have allowed 43 more points than the next worst team and that would be the Tennessee Titans who lost again today to fall to what one and eight. Jesus Christ. That’s tough man. And now, so, not to keep harping on the trade deadline, but if you were ever going to convince this organization to do something like trade Trey Hendrickson, I mean, I don’t I mean, he didn’t play in this game anyway, but like I don’t want to imagine what the back half of the year looks like without him, but for who? For what, dude? Like, what what you might as well try to salvage something about the way this is going. And yeah, it makes me wonder what what’s in store over the next 48 hours. Speaking of things that felt unsalvageable, let’s get to our next game here. The Broncos win an absolute rock fight against the Houston Texans. And we’re not picking on any one group here. This entire game is kind of a what the [ __ ] sort of performance from both of these offenses. We have a 33% success rate for the Texans, a 37 12% success rate for the Broncos. Tex Texans averaged 3.7 yards per play in this game. The Broncos averaged 4.4 yards per play in this game. It was just a gross football game. Like there’s just really nothing else to say. Like the fact that the Texans, my favorite part of this, the Texans get the ball back with like a minute and 15 seconds left in the game deep in their own territory. And there are people on Texans Twitter that thought them trying to score in that situation with a minute and 15 seconds and two timeouts was the incorrect decision cuz they had too far to go to potentially set themselves up to score. And if they had just gone to overtime, it would have been a better chance for them to win the game, which is the most play not to lose, like loser mentality approach of all time. And in this specific situation, I can’t really blame them for feeling that way because that’s how it felt for the Texans offense in this game. I mean, Dave, who do you think’s going to win the game for you, Will Anderson or Davis Mills? I mean, Will Anderson. The Seahawks are exc Well, the the the Texans played that to perfection against the Seahawks a couple weeks ago, right? where it’s like, oh, are you really you’re playing for the cowardly pin him deep punt and then will Anderson strip Sam Darnold for a touchdown. So, yeah, in this case, I’ll lean on those guys because I agree with any Texans fan that felt hopeless in that situation. CJ Stout going down in this game, I mean, he was solid before he went out. He did look solid and it just evolved into being completely unwatchable for the Texans offense and it was frustrating even before he went out. He throws that beautiful ball to Dalton Schultz on that wrap route to get them inside the 15 yardd line. They get down to the 12. Then that drive ends with two fullback dives in a row on second and third down. They get to fourth and one. They get a false start that makes them kick the field goal. It was actually probably a good thing that they had to kick the field goal because otherwise they probably wouldn’t have left that situation with any points. This team’s inability to get one yard when they need to is insane. Just sneak the quarterback. You’re on the one yard line. Just sneak the quarterback. The inability to get one yard, it sucks, but it happens when you don’t have an offensive line. The inability to accept that you can’t get one yard that way. Accept that you cannot get it that way. Accept it. Move on. Do something else. Sneak the quarterback. Leak somebody into this flat. I don’t care what you do, but we have a lot of evidence that suggests you can’t line up and bully somebody in short yardage. And yet, every time I check in on this team, they’re trying to do it. And the Texans defense tried their best to keep this thing within reach. And what from what they did to the Broncos offense, the Broncos offense makes like four or five plays over the course of this game. And it ends up being enough because the Texans offense was not functional by the end of things. It it I mean, other than Sutton beating Stingley like on one of the go balls down the left sideline, like the Broncos offense did not move the ball whatsoever. Like this was very much a game where the Texans defense was their ability to just fly down and swarm on everything is insane. Like all the DBs do it. Alshier I thought had an insane game in terms of flying down to the line of scrimmage. Obviously the front played incredibly well. Like this was that defense absolutely deserved to win the game and they did not get to win it. And like Bo Nicks, I’ve talked before about him wasting throws down the field. This was the most wasted down the field I’ve ever seen from him. There were so many like Nate used to say performative deep balls. I’m talking about Aaron Rogers. There were a lot of performative Bo Knicks deep balls in this game. I mean, you can count on one hand like the plays that won the Broncos this game. Their touchdown, their first touchdown drive, there’s a really nice design on third down that gets uh Kamari Ler caught in the wash trying to stick with Bandy going back to the left flat in about halfway through the third quarter. Bon puts it on him. Completion. On that same drive, Bon Knicks misses Evan Ingram miserably on a double move up the left sideline, but Courtland Sutton hooks Derek Stingley so bad on the release later in that drive. Knicks hits him, touchdown. All sins are forgiven. Their touchdown drive late in the third quarter. On hits deep out to Troy Franklin off play action. That’s a really nice play in rhythm. He beats the blitz to Pat Bryan on third and seven. And then they have RJ Harvey in another designed play against man coverage on totoe on the wheel route. touchdown. That’s it. Those are like the positive plays for the Broncos offense in this game. And that was enough to win the football game. Bo was two of 10 on attempts of 20 plus area yards. The two completions were the two touchdowns that were scored in this game. 10 throws of 20 plus area yards. This is absurd. By the way, I’ll do you one better. I was curious about this. 18 of Bose’s 37 attempts were either behind the line of scrimmage or 20 plus yards downfield. It’s the Russell Wilson offense. It’s the Russell Wilson offense, which what was Shawn Peyton trying to avoid? Bose’s success rate. Bose success rate on those 18 throws was 16%. Just a gross gross football game. Congratulations to the Broncos for winning it. Last one here. We don’t have to spend a ton of time on this. I want to talk about this game in some way and to me this was the right way to do it. John Parker Romo missing that PAT late in the Falcons game. Here’s why this is a what the moment for me. How are we going to make that Drake London game not matter? How are we gonna make that Drake London sequence at the end of that game not matter? On the drive to tie it up, Drake London has a 40der down the left sideline where he posterize posterizes Christian Gonzalez. He has a fourth and four curl route that he sits down in space. Michael Pennix finds him for a huge conversion and then on the touchdown, it’s fourth and eight. The the play that Drake London makes on that touchdown throw that we talked about the Jefferson play where he stabs that ball with one hand. Go if you again go watch the all 22 of that play where Drake Lennon scores a touchdown to tie the game up. His left hand, he stabs that throw with one hand and pulls it in and then they miss the extra point for it not to matter whatsoever. Like I cannot believe that the game that Drake London had today ended up not being important because they missed the field. They missed an extra point at the end of this thing. It’s deeply deeply depressing. Which the Falcons did still have a chance to win the game. I mean, they did they got the ball back with with three and a half minutes to play with a chance to go win, but it it lacked the ump that you would prefer like because what the the Patriots were in total control of this game and and then the strip sack changes the game. Gradually the Falcons work their way back and when that touchdown gets scored, you kind of sit up in your seat and you’re like, “All right, here we go. Two 2024 quarterbacks. Let’s see what you got.” And I get that the Falcons still had their chance, but it just it changed the complexion of everything and who knows who knows what we’re talking about if if it’s a tie game in the final, you know, inside the final five minutes. That was the most like I feel like Drake London has a lot of these like if he scores a hattick or has a 100 yards but they lose, does anybody hear it? Like he’s just he has so many of these moments where he’s just I mean I think it was the first touchdown he makes where we were joking about this in the office when he makes it his ability and T. Higgins is the only other player like this, and it’s funny that he also had a monster game today. When they go up for the ball and like catch it outside of their chest and keep it all the way out of their frame, they’re the only guys who can protect the ball that way and hold on to it. And he does it when he goes up for it on that first touchdown, I think, over Marcus Jones, who again, a little bit of a shorter player, but London userize people in the red zone. Exactly. That’s what you do with a player like that. And so I I just thought it was cool that he had a game like this. And it sucks that Yeah. It comes down to a kicker missing. Listen, you miss like a 50-yard field goal. I can live with that. The the PAT is like that’s just brutal for it to be like that. This is a weird weird game. The Patriots were eight of 12 on third down. But because of a couple of the turnovers, Drake May was sacked six times. That’s why the Falcons were able to stay in it. And then Drake May or Drake Men has that monster game. And again, it ends up not mattering because the Falcons can’t make an extra point. And so just a weird one. But the Patriots go to seven and two. they continue to roll and uh again this is probably the worst game that Drake May has had since week one but still enough for them to win and and the thing I’ll quickly say about him I obviously love Drake May this game is kind of more what I thought it would look like for him generally where you still get yeah where you still get a lot of the good but you get him getting sacked six times and like he’s I think he’s a very good player and he can obviously make a lot of scrambles but I think generally the bargain that you have to buy with him is that he is going to take sacks he has the second highest pressure to sack great in the NFL right now. I think the worst is Cam Ward who like God bless what he’s got to deal with in Tennessee. That’s a little bit of a different situation, but u and then obviously like throwing an interception to where he’s trying to hit Hunter Henry and it looks like there’s a little bit of a miscommunication. Like that stuff is more what I thought his game overall was going to look like. So, if anything, I guess it’s nice that he could have that game and they still come out and win. All right, let’s get let’s talk about some of our other favorite moments from week nine and uh discuss some of the things that made us feel romantic about football today. I mean, this thing was a a thing of beauty. Why don’t you kick us off here, buddy? You’re you’re you’re our guest here again. What made you feel romantic about football in week nine? So, mine is really stupid, but I’m gonna go back to the Bears Bengals game, which was really stupid. So Britain Brown, who is the backup running back in this game for the Bears, who obviously if they had all their guys would be like third or fourth, it’s a third and one in the late third quarter, and the the Bears offensive line clears everybody out. He’s going to get to the line of scrimmage and to the first down marker very comfortably. Just as he’s approaching the line of scrimmage, he tries to leap over the pile, leaps into the pile cuz there’s no pile to leap over initially and just jumps into like everybody and gets it’s like a four-yard game. He converts. I’m not like like he gets his moment and then on the next play they keep him in there. Congratulations, you did your job. And they they do a zone toss to him to the left side and he he scores like a touchdown from like 25 yard. Yes. Another terrible Jordan battle angle. But I just thought it was so funny that Britain Brown like Manunga had played like almost all of the snaps in this game up to that point. Britain Brown finally gets his moment to shine. He’s like, I’m jumping over this pile. Like one way or another for any reason I’m getting over that pile. The only thing better and like like Bears games take on heightened significance on this show and in this office, but normally like that’s the type of play that maybe you miss on a Sunday and then on Thursday you’re I’m not going to allow that to happen. Fair. But typ like like you you’re watching a game back on like Thursday and all of a sudden something like that happens. We’re like what the what the hell is he doing? Why did he just do that? Listen, you’re a fourth string running back. It’s third down. You got to make a play. Exactly. He was he had gained the yards necessary when he jumped. It was fantastic. Mine is just two Justin Herbert throws uh from that game today. The touchdown he throws to Quentyn Johnston in the back right corner of the end zone. Like the the layering and just how feathered that throw is. Just absolutely beautiful ball and then the back shoulder throw he has to Quen Johnson down the right sideline. Like this is why you get up in the morning is to like watch this guy make throws like that in huge moments. And also like there’s a Quinton Johnson part of this. The fact it’s you know he hasn’t he hasn’t been gang busters all year for Quinton Johnston. He had a monster start to the season. It’s kind of fallen off a little bit since. But the fact that Quinton Johnson is like a useful NFL player who is still contributing in positive ways to what this Chargers offense can be based on how the early career run was for Quinton Johnston. It feels good, right? like it’s just nice to see a guy who had a lot of struggles and who took a lot of [ __ ] early in his career still be able to come through in some of these moments. And so that part of it combined with the fact that every single week we’re going to get a couple of these just javelin throws from Justin Herbert who is truly I mean like this isn’t overstating it like one of the most purely talented throwers of the football that we have ever seen. When he has a couple of those more than enough to make me feel romantic about football. Mine is twofold. Uh, a because it’s just it’s the type of stuff I love to see, but it also represents the way the game is changing and has changed. Because when I started covering the NFL in 2013, this is the type of [ __ ] that would define a news cycle and now it’s just operating procedure for smartly coached NFL teams. And it happened. It did happen twice. We talked about both of these games. Kevin Oonnell and Mike Vrabel, both with secondyear quarterbacks with a chance to put the game away, put it in the quarterback’s hands, and let him throw to keep the offense on the field and win the game. And maybe it doesn’t look revolutionary now, but it feels revolutionary to 25year-old me who would who got very used to watching coaches punt and play defense and defend why that was the right way to do things. So Vikings third and five from their own 28 up 27 to 24 with 141 to play. Lions have a timeout. You could absolutely JJ McCarthy’s first game in six weeks or whatever. He’s a young player. You could absolutely run force him to burn a timeout. Punt Jared Goff’s got like a minute and a half to try to tie the game. Like you could do that if you wanted to. What do they do instead? They run a slot fade to Jaylen Naylor in one-on-one coverage. He’s like, “Go make a play, young fella.” And he absolutely does. 16-yd gain. Victory formation. Patriots Falcons. Pats up 24-23. 142 to play. Falcons don’t even have their timeout. And it’s third and five. So like you run the ball, you’re getting it down to a minute and then after the punt, like you’re giving the Falcons less than a minute to move and try to win the game. Again, maybe that sounds silly in 2025, but like coaches are doing this the other way not that long ago. And what do you do? You clear out the left side. You run Hunter Henry on like a shallow out. M. Holland throws a fantastic pick that that I mean like I say that in a complimentary fashion. Great pick on the play to free him up. First down victory formation. If you have a chance to end the game with the ball in your hand. You should do that. That’s what you should do because getting a first down and kneeling it out is a hell of a lot easier than all the other [ __ ] that has to go your way. And to see two coaches do it again with young quarterbacks who haven’t played that much football, it gave me a lot of warm fuzzies. It was nice to see the Vikings have that sort of moment because the Patriots have had plenty of them so far this year. All right, let’s talk about what we learned from week nine in the NFL. You know, I think I’ve learned something today. My big picture lesson from week nine in the NFL season and especially from today. No matter how well your season is going, you’re going to run into one of these. You are going to run into a roadblock, a buzzsaw. You are going to have a down day where you just get the [ __ ] kicked out of you more likely than not over the course of an NFL season. Just think about how unstoppable the Colts looked for such a huge swath of this year. Just think about what Patrick Mahomes had looked like over the last four or five weeks and that doesn’t always matter. Like you were going to run into some of these moments and today I think was a pretty brutal rude reminder of that for a couple of teams that had been absolutely rolling recently. It’s really wild to think like unless you’re just unless you’re truly truly special like maybe once every few years we’ll get a team where they really are just they never get their asses kicked. But more of like more often than not every team in the league is going to have a week or two every year where the game ends and you look at what happened and you’re like do they do we suck? Did like did did the league just figure us out? like every single team, it doesn’t matter if you win 12 games or what, like more often than not, you’re going to have a performance that makes you do some soularching. That’s so great, too, cuz I was thinking too, like every now and then, we just forget that even teams that go on to win the Super Bowl, you’ll look back at their schedule the year later and be like, “Holy [ __ ] they lost to them in week 13 or whatever it was.” And it’s like there’s no way. We probably thought at the time we were when they lose that game, we were like, “Man, what are that team’s Super Bowl chances now?” Like, how are they really burned in my brain? Like they’re not the only ones that like I said it happens most years but the 2020 Bucks the Brady Bucks they lost to the Saints 38-3 like late in the season like the weather was cold when they got they lost 38-3 and you hear people say all the time like you know like fans after their team gets their asses kicked they’re like super old Super Bowl teams don’t lose like that and I’m like I promise you they do. They do all the time. Yeah. The Chiefs had that game today. The Colts had a bad day today and the Packers a week after putting it on the Steelers lose to the lose to the uh to the Panthers. And so these are going to happen. They are part of the NFL season and week nine was a very good reminder of that. That is all we’ve got for today. Tomorrow on the Hangover Show, like we mentioned, we’re going to have the Sunday night game that we’re going to dig into between the Commanders and the Seahawks. We’re going to chat a little bit of Niners Giants. And then what was the third one? Raiders Jags. Yes, that is correct. That was the third game. Naria mentioned of the overtime uh history making field goal game. We’ll get y’all y’all we’ll talk about that game tomorrow. Part of the reason we did not dig into it today is because we were watching Chiefs Bills pretty intensely as that game was going on. And so I did not want to like give it a half-hearted wave. I actually want to go back and rewatch it tomorrow. So those are the three games that we will be digging into on the Hangover for week nine. Just a reminder, Tuesday 3:30 p.m. Eastern on our YouTube channel live trade deadline recap show. We’ll be sitting right here doing it. Very much looking forward to that. Please be on the lookout for it. Come hang out with us on Tuesday while we’re recapping all of the moves that did or did not happen. Couple other fun things on the horizon for us on the Athletic Football Show. We’ll keep reminding you those. We got a live show coming in January. We’ll keep telling you guys those details. Tickets go on sale, I believe, later this week. So, please be on the lookout for that. For now, that is all we got. I appreciate you guys listening. We’ll talk to you very soon. [Music]
Now that’s more like it. After a blowout-filled Week 8, the NFL got back to its down-to-the-wire ways in Week 9. Of course, Buffalo Bills over Kansas City Chiefs goes down as the big story of the day, and that’s where Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman begin the Week 9 recap episode of The Athletic Football Show. The guys also discuss eye-opening wins for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings, a fireworks show between the Chicago Bears and Cincinnati Bengals, a puzzling loss for the Green Bay Packers to the Carolina Panthers, a rockfight between the Denver Broncos and Houston Texans, and plenty more.
0:00 Welcome to the show
1:19 Bills defense shuts down Patrick Mahomes
7:01 Cole Bishop had the game of his life
8:30 Joey Bosa showed up big time
11:05 Bills offense/Josh Allen masterclass
15:00 The Bills won…but does it matter?
17:46 Steelers defense dominates
20:15 TJ Watt makes the play of the game
22:25 Indianapolis Colts offensive line struggles
25:50 Daniel Jones looked very uncomfy today
26:10 Steelers offense
27:40 Should we be worried about the Colts?
29:47 Vikings-Detroit Lions
32:25 Lions run game fizzles
34:00 Vikings defense
37:30 Vikings offense
43:08 The continued JJ McCarthy conversation
46:45 Packers-Panthers
51:25 Putting Jordan Love on trial
57:00 Panthers offense
59:25 Bears-Bengals
1:01:40 Bad defense all around
1:04:22 Bears run game
1:06:00 Weird game from Caleb Williams and the Bears passing offense
1:08:24 Bengals offense
1:10:00 Broncos-Texans
1:11:40 CJ Stroud injured
1:12:10 Texans offense
1:13:00 Texans defense/Bo Nix
1:15:15 Atlanta Falcons-New England Patriots and Drake London love
1:18:10 Patriots/Drake Maye’s worst game since…?
1:19:23 We’re romantic about football
1:21:05 Justin Herbert was silly today (so was Quentin Johnston)
1:24:55 What did we learn today?
1:27:50 Show announcement!
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17 comments
1:12:14 CJ played well until he was concussed.
Can we all please stop pretending Mahomes is the best QB in the league, he isn't and hasn't been for 3 years now and all he does is put points up against bad teams
Derrick's Love for Love is crazy. So many excuses.
If you want to know why the Packers are consistently getting into plus territory and blow it, just look at the state if the current NFL.
The Avg starting field position is better than what it has ever been. 2 first downs on a drive gets teams past midfield. There are a lot of instamces of teams going for it on 4th dowm after what should be a 3 and out because they are in the middle 40. The Packers gave a good run game so of course they consistently pick up a couple of 1st downs.
Then Jordan Love gets to be his natural self, which is completely inconsistent, and you get some really inconsistent results.
Apparently these morons didn’t watch that Bear Bengals game because they totally didn’t mention Bears receivers dropped 5 passes. Or the great pass DJ Moore on the sideline.
Cole Bishop won that game for Buffalo. The plays he made cost the Chiefs 7 points at least (that’s a highly conservative estimate), and 7 was the margin in the game.
Somebody has to GO for leaving Daniels in that game. Good lord
Everyone jumping on the Chiefs bandwagon after beating a bunch of crummy teams isn't aging well. 😂
For the unitiated or just straight haters, the chiefs only lost by 7 in a game that their coaches didn't gameplan for and missing both of their tackles and the bills treated as their super bowl.
I thought seeing 5 years of this would make people realize kc plays with 1 hand tied behind their back in the regular season so they can win when it matters. Do yall think it's a coincidence that they average 21 in regular season matchups and 35 in the playoffs? Or do they actually try and win everytime they do?
The Jordan Love excuses are nuts 🥜🥜🥜
Thanks guys, another great episode. I've got a suggestion/request for a deep dive from either Derrik or Robert. Can someone break down in depth what makes a good running back good? And I mean as a runner of the ball, removing pass protection from the equation.
In a split backfield, why do we see a concerted difference in production? Why is Rico Dowdle such a productive back where Chuba wasn't before his injury this year? Bijan v Allgier (more last 2 years than this year) Skattebo v Tracey? Bucky v White and Walker v Charbonnet last year? Hunt v Pacheco? And then going back to Warren v Najee, Pollard v Elliott etc. Just any examples like that. A look at Gibbs and Monty would even be good to see what two great RBs of different styles are looking at when the ball is snapped.
I'd love some more insight on this because I feel like it's always talked about in very general terms, but I've never had it laid out clearly what a guy might be doing or seeing outside of just being more athletic, because it doesn't always seem like that is even the determining factor.
Love the show!
Broncos offense was largely miserable again but Houston has a lot to do with that; and at some point do they get some credit for making winning plays on the 4th quarter? Left out of your list of the good plays by Denver was Nix scramble for 26 yards to set up the winning FG
jordan love is possessed by the ghost of rex grossman. "fuck it i'm goin deep"
Hearing people complain and bitch about how terrible teams are that win games only makes you sound stupid.
thanks for staying up late & putting this together for us. And nice shirt Dave 🙂 My poor Bengals. that was absolute torture, as I am sure it was for Robert (until the end)
I think Derek's argument about Jordan love is similar to the sam darnold game against the Texans. When he wasn't making mistakes he looked excellent
The curse word censor bleeps are as inconsistent as the bears pass offense
Packer fans are delusional.