PodcastFrom The Long View Podcast

Week 2 Injury Reactions + Revisiting the RB Dead Zone

STACKED extracted the fantasy-relevant player signal from this podcast and kept the full transcript here for context.

2 hr 30 min

Duration

Estimated from transcript

Sep 24, 2026

Published

Thu, September 24, 2026

Player insights

Players mentioned

Topics

Jayden DanielsRashee RiceXavier WorthyAlec PierceCaleb WilliamsColston LovelandEmmett JohnsonJalen RoyalsJayden ReedKeenan AllenKenneth Walker IIIMalik NabersPatrick MahomesTed Hurst

Player analysis

Player insights

Alec Pierce

NegativeInjury6:49

Alec Pierce left the game early, leading to concerns that the Colts offense would fall apart, though they managed to perform admirably in his absence.

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Caleb Williams

NegativeInjury39:25

Caleb Williams is dealing with a hamstring injury that is expected to keep him out for one to two weeks. The source notes the Bears' offense struggled significantly in Week 2 without his mobility, though they remain optimistic about the offense's potential once he returns.

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Colston Loveland

PositiveBreakout40:07

Despite a slow start and decreased route participation in Week 2 due to blocking requirements, the source remains optimistic about Colston Loveland. The source views the early-season struggles as a team-wide issue rather than a talent decline and believes Loveland still has the potential to be a breakout tight end.

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Emmett Johnson

PositiveUsage27:56

The source believes the Chiefs will find ways to increase targets for Emmett Johnson, who continues to look incredible in his role.

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Jalen Royals

PositiveSleeper36:47

Jalen Royals is identified as an intriguing deep-league option after scoring a touchdown in Week 2. The source notes the team values his blocking ability, which keeps him on the field in heavy personnel sets, and suggests he could become more interesting if his usage increases.

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Jayden Daniels

NegativeInjury1:41

Jayden Daniels suffered a devastating injury in Week 2, which is particularly frustrating for the source as he was their most drafted quarterback in best ball formats.

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NegativeInjury44:36

Jayden Daniels is expected to miss three to six weeks with an elbow injury. The source notes he is attempting to avoid surgery, which would end his season, but his history of re-injuring the same elbow makes his outlook precarious even if he returns with a brace.

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NegativeInjury90:20

The source notes Daniels is in a holding pattern with an elbow injury; he reportedly wants to avoid surgery to play this season, though a 3-6 week recovery or IR stint is possible. The source advises against cutting him in deep formats like FFPC, as he remains a high-upside asset if he returns.

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PositiveBreakout98:47

The source remains high on Daniels, citing his elite talent and differentiating fantasy scoring profile. While acknowledging injury concerns and his tendency to take unnecessary hits, the source argues his rookie season production was suppressed by playing through a rib injury and poor supporting casts.

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Jayden Reed

PositiveInjury91:48

Despite being dropped in some leagues, the source views Jaden Reed as a speculative hold. Reports indicate he is doing well, and while he may miss time, there is optimism regarding his recovery timeline.

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Keenan Allen

NegativeInjury39:12

Keenan Allen is dealing with a toe injury that is currently considered on the doubtful side of questionable for his upcoming availability.

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Kenneth Walker III

PositiveUsage25:21

The source views the addition of Kenneth Walker as a significant boost to the Chiefs' passing efficiency, noting he is heavily involved in the passing game with 10 targets in the recent contest.

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Malik Nabers

NegativeUsage182:12

The source notes that Nabers' development was hindered by injuries to himself and quarterback Jackson Dart, preventing them from building chemistry after Nabers started the year with Russell Wilson.

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Patrick Mahomes

PositiveProjection25:20

The source is highly optimistic about Patrick Mahomes, noting he looks like a contender for the passing title. The addition of Kenneth Walker has improved the run game, allowing Mahomes to hit deep one-on-one shots to Taequann Thornton and Xavier Worthy, which he hasn't been able to do in years.

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Rashee Rice

NegativeBust28:03

The source remains skeptical of Rashee Rice's long-term outlook, noting he is primarily a zone weapon and not a strong man-beater. The source has been actively selling Rice in dynasty leagues.

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PositiveUsage37:35

Rashee Rice is described as indisputably good at yards-after-catch (YAC) plays. The source expects him to eventually command more screen targets than Xavier Worthy due to his superior tackle-breaking ability.

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Ted Hurst

NegativeUsage18:52

The source notes that Ted Hurst failed to make a crucial catch in the rain during the final possession against the Browns, which likely cost the team a win.

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Travis Kelce

PositiveUsage26:18

Travis Kelce had a monster game and looks better than expected. The source has shifted up expectations for him, noting that he is a primary beneficiary of the Chiefs' passing volume and the Colts' poor linebacker play.

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Trenton Irwin

NegativeUsage9:10

Trenton Irwin caught a 60-yard pass during the Colts' overtime drive, though he fumbled the ball immediately after the catch.

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Trey McBride

PositiveValue41:17

Trey McBride is described as an elite, unstoppable focal point of the Cardinals' passing game. The source considers him a top-tier tight end and notes that drafting him over other tight ends like Colston Loveland has proven to be a significant value advantage.

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Tyquan Thornton

PositiveRole37:18

Tyquan Thornton is seeing increased usage in the short-to-intermediate passing game, including crossers and drag routes. The source notes this is a shift from his previous role as a rotational deep threat and suggests he could become a more consistent fixture in the offense.

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Xavier Worthy

NegativeBreakout28:12

The source has long-standing concerns about Xavier Worthy's efficiency and playstyle, noting he often looks hesitant or lacks conviction. However, he remains a cheap asset in a high-powered offense who may eventually work into a clearer top role.

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NegativeUsage37:06

The source expresses significant concern regarding Xavier Worthy's inability to break tackles on screen plays, noting he goes down easily upon contact. The source contrasts this with Travis Kelce's reliability and suggests Worthy lacks the tackle-breaking ability required for his current usage, leading to a lack of confidence in his ability to produce on deep shots or screens.

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Full transcript

Episode Transcript

2,003

0:00Revisiting the RB Dead Zone, The Long View Podcast, Ben Gretch, you can find the Stealing Signals newsletter at bengretch.substack.com.

0:05With me as always is Jacob Sanderson. You can find his fantastic work at Thinking About Thinking, titled Thinking About Thinking at jacobstanderson.substack.com.

0:11Week 2, we made it here. We both really wanted to talk about the Packers a little bit.

0:16We were recording these on Thursdays. We're getting a little bit of a later jump today.

0:20They're playing Thursday night. Not much Packers Falcons talk today.

0:23We're going to have to avoid the Thursday night teams typically.

0:26We also said on the last show, Jacob, that we were going to talk survivor pools going forward.

0:31We had two entrants in the splash sports survivor pool.

0:33We talked through it. We had our options. Week 1, we had played the Steelers in both of them.

0:38And they had kind of a closer game than you wanted with the Falcons.

0:42We decided we were okay with that. We were okay with the pushing chips in concept again in week 2.

0:47We went with that with the Bucs. We will not be talking about the survivor pools very much more after this individual conversation right now.

0:54How you doing? How you doing? Man, it was a frustrating week to be honest.

0:58Like it was just a... It was like really three events massively frustrated me.

1:01And they... Two of them happened in rapid succession, which was the Jaden Daniels injury, which he's like my most drafted quarterback in best ball.

1:08Really was pretty high on the whole team. I guess like it was almost even more frustrating because they didn't look that great in week 1.

1:15I had written about a lot about how I expect them to have a huge bounce back in week 2.

1:20It looked like they were doing that. They were playing really a pretty fun game in the first half.

1:25Had they just converted like one more yard instead of...

1:28And they'd be in half at 17-17. And instead, obviously, that super devastating injury happens and just socks to see Jaden Daniels out again.

1:34And then shortly after that, the Bucs lose. And then I had to deal with like just truly a soul-wrenching Colts game,

1:40which like I'm not going to subject our listeners to 45 minutes of Colts Corner again.

1:44But I mean, the game management... I think they like it.

1:47They like Colts Corner. I keep doing positive stuff.

1:49Okay, we can do Colts Corner. I mean, the game management in overtime sent me like into another dimension.

1:54I like... Usually, I do that stuff for the intro to like a completely unrelated column.

1:59And I have like arranged my writing schedule this year where that's no longer necessary.

2:03Even though it's going to be six days later, I'm still going to write about it as one of my five topics on the Saturday column.

2:09Because it just... It drove me nuts. Like ruined my weekend.

2:12Kicking the field goal. Like... Well, yes. But it was a combination of things.

2:16Like... So kicking the field goal really bothered me.

2:18But it was a combination really of four things.

2:21I knew it would. Just like... I'm not laughing, but like...

2:24I wrote that up for Stealing Signals. And I like...

2:26I didn't have the strongest take on it. It was actually the last game of the week that I watched.

2:31And I... I worked through that at the very end.

2:34And I was like late to my... My Tuesday Night Signals Gold Q&A that I do.

2:38Had to get part two out. Like week two is always a long...

2:42I was telling you this like for your Hitchhiker's Guide 2.

2:45And I'm sorry to make this tangent so large.

2:47But... That I... That I was telling you that I know you have the same...

2:51The same thing with your Hitchhiker's Guide. Yeah. Week two is like...

2:54Arguably the hardest week of the year. Like we...

2:57You know... Week one, there's always so much. But then week two, there's so much.

3:00It's still small samples. But you also have to compare it to week two.

3:04You have a... You have a data point to anchor to from week one.

3:08Week one is just like... Oh, here's what all the SnapShares were.

3:11Week two is like... Oh, he rose 20 percentage points.

3:14Or fell 20... Whatever. So like anyway... Week two was a really long process.

3:17This is the last game I got to. I didn't have a lot of heart when I wrote about it.

3:23In Stealing Signals. When I wrote up this game as the last game.

3:26But I'm writing it and I'm going... Jacob's gonna be so mad about this.

3:30So anyway... I want to hear it. Like what...

3:32What were your thoughts? Oh man. I mean it was...

3:35So... I mean first off... It was an incredible performance from them.

3:38I mean I'm watching this game with two of my best friends.

3:41One of whom has never watched a full NFL game before.

3:44So like he just like... Great guy. Was like...

3:46Hey, I saw your team is on Sunday Night Football.

3:49Like against the Taylor Swift team. Like... Do you want to watch this game together?

3:53I was like... Sounds great. I was like... Fair warning.

3:56I think we're gonna lose by like a lot.

3:58Like we look terrible in week one. And the Chiefs...

4:01You know... This team's gonna blitz us. And that's gonna be a problem.

4:04Anyways... I'm like... So I'm there with my boys.

4:06I'm like... Locking in for like disappointment. And they play great.

4:09I mean especially after Pierce went out. I thought we were just gonna fall apart.

4:13Our offense... Like what we were able to manufacture throughout the rest of the game without Pierce.

4:18I thought was really admirable. And I thought Steichen called a great game.

4:21And then... I mean first of all... I thought they should have gone for it on the fourth and four at midfield

4:27with like 30 seconds left in regulation. Because like if you convert that one...

4:31You pretty much just win the game. So I already thought we were too conservative there.

4:35Playing for overtime. And then it was really a combination of factors.

4:38So... We win the toss. And you've written about this.

4:41Like I've never even written about it very much in Think About Thinking.

4:44Because I thought... Like I thought you laid it out better than like it was necessary to try and do a redux of.

4:50But kind of the breakdown of all of the different strategy of whether or not to kick or receive in overtime.

4:56I mean at the end of the day I think that ultimately it's a pretty close call.

5:00Either way. But clearly... Like if you... We won the toss.

5:03We chose to kick. So we're going to give them the ball first.

5:06The biggest advantage of that scenario is if you give up a touchdown.

5:10Because then you know exactly what you need. And if you...

5:13Where it really hurts you of course is if you both punt or if you both kick field goals.

5:18And so once Chiefs kick a field goal... Like we really need to be optimizing I think around a touchdown or bust mindset.

5:24Like obviously if you end up in like a 4th and 15 or something the field goal is an option.

5:29But it's a really bad option. Especially when they have a 5 minute field goal drive.

5:33Because we get ourselves in a spot where it's very unlikely that we'll kick a field goal.

5:38Get a stop. And get the ball back. Pretty much the best we can do with a field goal at that point is to get a tie.

5:45What was especially odd to me is then the first play call of the drive is this shot play.

5:50Which was like the one that Treadwell caught like 60 yards downfield.

5:53And then he got up and he fumbled. And they called him touchdown.

5:56It was this total carnival play. I mean super fun play call.

6:00But that play call basically ruins your chance of locking in the tie.

6:03Because at that point you're all the way down to the 15 with 4 minutes left.

6:07So you're either going to have a turnover on downs.

6:10You're going to kick a field goal. And then the Chiefs are probably going to have the last possession.

6:15Or you're going to score a touchdown. And you're going to win the game.

6:19So as soon as they hit that play... Like to me the combination of you chose to kick.

6:23You chose to call a shot play on first down.

6:26Suggest like you have to be all in on winning the game at this point.

6:30Because if you kick a field goal you're not going to burn enough time off.

6:34Chiefs are going to have plenty of time to kick a field goal of their own.

6:38And like our defense the entire game had been pretty good actually in the red zone.

6:42But getting shredded between the 20s. And so it felt almost inevitable to me.

6:46If we give the ball back to the Chiefs they're getting a field goal.

6:50They'd also already ran like 70 plays. So then they run the ball twice on first and second down.

6:55I mean the first and 10 run is like totally fine.

6:58The second and 11 run is pretty questionable to me.

7:00But like the only world in which you can justify a second 11 run is if you've already decided like this is four down territory.

7:07So this second and 11 is basically first and 11.

7:09Right? And then we're going to run two more plays after this.

7:13We want to try and get it into a manageable distance.

7:15So that we're not like forced to go on third and 11.

7:19Obviously the play doesn't work. You don't expect to lose two.

7:22I get that. But from like a process perspective every decision they'd made up into that point suggests we're playing this for four downs.

7:28And so then when Shane had the offense on the field on fourth and eight like I wasn't even remotely surprised.

7:33I was like all the decisions we've made this overtime suggest like we're playing this to win this or lose this on this drive.

7:40And then when he like took the delay of game and they put the field goal.

7:44Like I was legitimately stunned and just like depressed.

7:46Like I didn't I don't I don't remember anything about the Chiefs drive after that to me like the game had ended

7:52when we chose to kick the field goal. Because like I also get like a lot of people will be like you

7:58know the tie in the standings whatever. I don't care and I'll defend this.

8:02Like the goal of being a sports fan is to like be happy or like sad on Sunday to be entertained.

8:07Like I just refuse to acknowledge that a tie is 50% of the way between a win and a loss.

8:12Like a tie is very marginally better than a loss.

8:15A win is massively better than a tie. Like had we won that game on Sunday Night Football against the Chiefs that

8:21would have been the most important football game of my life in like eight years.

8:25Like that like that would have like I would have been dancing in the streets.

8:29Like so it's like to take that option off the table and hope of a tie is like sickening.

8:34Absolutely sickening. So yeah I was I was just so disappointed and like like honestly like depressed.

8:38Like I couldn't go to sleep for like three hours.

8:41I just stared at the wall. Oh man I feel bad for you.

8:44If that was the perspective on the win you don't think a tie against that same situation wouldn't be closer to a win?

8:50Shit about ties. Who likes ties? So I mean the funny thing is in the cold sorry that's the last thing I'll

8:56say on it is the funny we actually have been in this situation kind of sort of before which was Frank Reich

9:02in his first season coaching the Colts. I think it was week two.

9:05It might have been week two. It was week one or week two or week three.

9:10We had a game against Houston and this was I think way back in the old OT rules.

9:14I'm pretty sure. But anyway I guess it had been punted back and forth a couple times.

9:19So we had the ball with very little time left and we had it like our own 40 or 45 or something like that.

9:25And it was a fourth and not much. And I mean basically the situation was if we convert this we have a chance to go win the game.

9:32If we don't we're just giving them up field goal range.

9:35But there's not enough time left for us to punt and get the ball back.

9:39And Reich went for it and we didn't get it and we lost the game.

9:43But I was thrilled. I was so happy. I was like we have a coach who's playing to win and not tie.

9:49Like this franchise has hope. Like that was one of the most important games I remember from the Frank Reich era was

9:55being so happy that we played to win and not tie even though it didn't work.

9:59And then to see that like go a different way eight years later was just so tilting to me.

10:04So you mentioned I wrote about the different scenarios a lot last year.

10:08I was very fascinated by what was a tie between the Cowboys and the Packers in I believe it was like week four.

10:14Prior to that I think it was week two.

10:16Was it the Giants and the Cowboys had an overtime?

10:19Is that the game where Russell Wilson hit like the long TDs?

10:22Did they play overtime? Yeah I think they had a tie.

10:25Did they have a tie? I can't remember. I don't think that was a tie but maybe that isn't the other game.

10:30There's another one I'm looking at. So I said I didn't have the heart to write about it and I would have

10:36loved to dive into this more in Stealing Signals.

10:39I just linked back to the intro where I wrote about that last year by about like week five or six and I broke down.

10:45There was multiple interesting ones like this early in the season last year.

10:49The third one was Rams 49ers where the Rams chose to kick off.

10:52The one that tossed and chose to kick off.

10:54The 49ers got a field goal. The Rams got down to a fourth and one with 341 remaining at the 11 yard line and they went for it.

11:02This is like somewhat similar to what you're describing other than it's a fourth and one as opposed to a fourth and eight.

11:08I can understand that like Steichen would want to point that out if he was on this podcast.

11:13Of course. He would want to point out that it was a fourth and one.

11:17We're taking time by the way Shane. I have a standing invite.

11:20I'm making the executive call. If Shane Steichen DMs me and says he wants to come on the long view we're accepting that.

11:26We're taking that. So the Rams went for it on fourth and one because they were down three and they didn't want

11:32to just kick for a tie with 341 left which is just enough time for the 49ers to go kick a field goal and beat them.

11:38You're playing for a tie or a loss just like the Colts did.

11:42And also to the point that you made that's very straightforward if you win the toss and choose to kick off you've already made that decision.

11:49If you get into this spot you're playing for a win.

11:52They kicked a field goal. The main reason you do it though as you said is if the other team gets a

11:57touchdown now you know you have four downs to go and all that stuff.

12:01You're not just settling for a field goal on fourth down and you may even after you score a touchdown make the

12:07decision to go for two likely you make the decision to go for two as opposed to giving your opponent a third possession.

12:13The this is what I wrote about early last year what was so fascinating to me and I don't think it's discussed

12:19enough is the difference between regular season and postseason overtime.

12:21This started as a postseason overtime discussion when whatever it was the Chiefs.

12:25It was the Chiefs and the Niners. It was it was Chiefs and Shanahan.

12:28Yeah. Yep. And there's there's been other postseason games.

12:31What happens in postseason overtime is they play 15 minute periods and they play as long as it goes.

12:36And there's like a two minute warning at the second period which we've hit I think in a postseason game like at the second OT two minute warning.

12:43What happens in the regular season and what I was writing about last year and I don't know if I ever got

12:49the answer to this because I'm looking at it but.

12:52What happened in the Packers Cowboys game. So I'm getting ahead of myself multiple ways.

12:56Oh it has been answered. I think I know what you're going to say.

12:59It's been answered. There's two questions really. So I'll be curious if that's correct.

13:03All right. So what happens in the regular season is a 10 minute period not a 15 minute period and there's a

13:09there is a you cannot you cannot like there's a rule in the rule book that there will like under no circumstances

13:15will there be more than the the 10 minute period.

13:17And I went to the rule book for this write up and at the time I was in this write up I

13:23believe I was like I don't know which supersedes because the other the other significant rule was I'm trying to find in this long multi paragraph introduction.

13:30I wrote about this where I just saw it here.

13:33I wrote for what it's worth on the NFL's official page for this.

13:36They don't clarify stating both that no more than one 10 minute overtime will be played and also each team must have

13:42an opportunity to possess the ball with the only exception listed being the team who kicks off recording a safety where they would win without possessing the ball.

13:49There's a very obvious question of what happens if one team possesses the ball for the whole 10 minutes that is not addressed.

13:55But again from what I can gather the 10 minute rule.

13:58So the first question was does the 10 minute rule override the both teams get a possession rule.

14:03And the reason I had asked that here because the Packers situation was they chose to kick the Cowboys scored a touchdown

14:09and the Packers took their time moving the ball back down and ultimately ran out of time.

14:13And I think it was on a fourth down at the end of the first overtime.

14:18They just like chucked it to the end zone and the pass got knocked away.

14:21They had to like speed up. And the reason this is important and the whole point I'm driving home the difference between the regular season and the postseason.

14:29Is if you only have a 10 minute overtime and there will not be more than a 10 minute overtime, there cannot

14:35be a second overtime like there's in the postseason.

14:37There is a real issue with all of these scenarios where one team drives down on scores and another team drives back

14:43down on scores are too long possessions. There's an issue of like they can both take five minutes.

14:48You can run out of time. And that's what happened to the Packers.

14:51The Cowboys drove down slow drive. They used up like seven minutes scored.

14:54And there was like three minutes for the Packers who had chose to kick so they could have the second drive and have more information.

15:01But they ran out of time. And so the first question was whether the Packers would have gotten a second overtime.

15:07It was like not clear at the time of the Packers thing.

15:10That one got answered, right? Do you? Yeah. The other question I have that I don't know if it got because I do remember that getting answered.

15:17Do you know if the what happens if one team possesses the ball for the whole 10 minutes question got answered?

15:22I don't know if that's been answered. I mean, I assume the most you would get would be like, what, like one Hail Mary?

15:29I mean, I assume the to me, the answer almost has to be then the game ends.

15:33Yeah, I think it does. Because if you if you're I mean, we know for a fact that if the first team's

15:39drive takes nine minutes and 59 seconds, then the other team gets one play.

15:43Yep. And that's so they're done. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's I think you're right, because I think we already learned

15:48that the the 10 minute rule like overrules the both teams get a possession rule, even though, again, all the official page on the NFL's official page.

15:56Right. Or at least at the time that I wrote this last year, I haven't checked.

16:00Maybe it's been maybe it's been updated somewhere. But there's like you can you can check their official rules.

16:05And at that time, I was like, you know, being the game nerd that I am.

16:09And I know you are, too. Like we've played board games and things like for sure.

16:13Play a board game that doesn't clarify a rule.

16:16It's a problem. This happens. It even happens at the NFL level where you can write your rules and not understand that

16:21there are scenarios that can occur that your rules do not cover.

16:25And that was actually the case with the new overtime rules where it was like we're saying definitively no more than one 10 minute overtime can occur.

16:32And each team must possess the ball. Literally in week two, we had a possession in the fourth quarter from the Seahawks

16:37against the Cardinals that went more than 10 minutes in the final quarter where they ran the ball 16 straight times.

16:43Now, in overtime in the regular season, there's a two minute warning on that first overtime.

16:47There's also two timeouts. It would take longer than what the Seahawks did there.

16:51It would take it would be a Herculean effort to run out the full 10 minutes with a with the three stoppages

16:57that you get the two timeouts and the two minute warning.

17:00It almost certainly would never happen. But I do think that's a loophole in the rule.

17:04Regardless, the constraint in the regular season of the game ends after 10 minutes is a meaningful part of this discussion.

17:09I think if you're in the postseason, the idea of kicking when you win the toss makes some sense because you get,

17:15you know, all the full benefit of your second possession.

17:18Because the regular season thing, you can run out of time.

17:21I actually wound up concluding here that I felt like it was very close, as you said, and the models have said it's very close.

17:27But I felt like teams were choosing to kick in the regular season.

17:31I would take the ball. I would I don't think because if I go down and I score a touchdown, I can

17:36also run clock as I do that. Knowing everything that I'm laying out here, I can like make my possession be as

17:42methodical as I want it to be. And if I can use seven minutes and leave them only three minutes coming back,

17:48I've not created a real issue for them where they need to get a touchdown.

17:52Yeah, they know they have a fourth down, but they also have constraints on time now.

17:56They have they have to be pass only. They have to be very one dimensional.

18:00It changes football when you have to be one dimensional and you're going to come from behind mode.

18:05And you're it's like what the Bucs had against the Browns this week where they had that final possession that ended up having a huge stoppage.

18:12But you have to have a touchdown. You're down for it's the fourth quarter.

18:15You got to throw basically every down you're you know, you're out of timeouts.

18:19You're in these like weird situations. They had a chance to win that game, but I was not very optimistic.

18:24I'm sure as you were watching it, you were pretty, pretty nervous as well.

18:28We did. I was very optimistic before the stoppage, to be honest.

18:31I felt like they were going to do it because I'm like four downs and like, yeah, I felt and they had

18:37like kind of the perfect amount of time where like, it was a not it was so little time that the Browns

18:43were probably going to play some prevent, but it was like not so little time that they couldn't run the ball.

18:48And yeah, I mean, I thought they were going to do it.

18:52I mean, they still almost did it if Ted Hurst.

18:54I mean, I mean, frankly, if it just wasn't pouring rain, Ted Hurst makes that catch.

18:58I'm pretty sure. And then they do win. So that would have been so fun if you would have caught that.

19:04It was a dime right on his hands. But anyway, I went through.

19:07Oh, God. Oh, I was just going to say, if you want anything more to add, go for it.

19:12Oh, I was going through all the stuff from last year, but I wanted to circle it back to the Colts decision.

19:18Yeah, do it. Essentially agree with you and say they had a fourth and eight.

19:22They took the delay game. One of the things that I think was crazy about the delay game is they did have a timeout.

19:28They say later they had a they were looking for a specific look that they didn't see, whatever.

19:33And what I wrote in my very short write up for stealing signals this week about the Colts thing was just like, I mean, pretty straightforward to me.

19:41If you if you look, I understand. I wrote I the reasoning was they were looking for a specific look and didn't get it.

19:47I probably burn the timeout and draw another play to go for it then.

19:51Oh, really? I wouldn't because you might need that timeout to have a chance to get the ball back.

19:56That's that's where I was going to go with it.

19:58You're not saving that timeout. No, no, no, no.

20:01I think it's a great point. I loved it.

20:03You're not saving that timeout for anything. You're already playing for a tie anyway.

20:07Like I just anyway, like what they thought they were going to kick, get a stoppage, get the ball back and get a field goal in three minutes.

20:14Like what the fuck? Well, I mean, if you don't think you're going to get a stop, why the hell are you?

20:20I mean, if you don't think you're going to stop, then you just lose.

20:23Yeah. Then you're not even playing for a tie.

20:26So, I mean, you better think you're getting a stop.

20:28Yeah. So then I guess from that perspective, saving the timeout doesn't make sense because they were they thought they were getting a stop.

20:35But regardless, I just burn the timeout and go for it.

20:38Like if you're not getting a stop, you might as well just take a knee.

20:42I mean, screw the field goal. Get home earlier.

20:44Save the injury risk. Anyway, I thought that the timeout clearly, as you laid out, was the move there.

20:49And then, yeah, you didn't get the look on the one play that you drew up, but you have to have other plays for whatever look you're expecting.

20:56Like you should probably have two plays called anyway.

20:59They always do those. They always, you know, kill, kill, kill, and they go to the second play when they face what

21:05they think is a man or a zone look or whatever.

21:07Like they should have had two plays anyway. But if you didn't have two plays, you won one specific look, you know, you take a delay game.

21:15Don't – the problem with a delay game also is your kicker can just miss.

21:19Like what if they would have missed that kick because they made it five yards further?

21:23Like what do you – anyway, it was bad.

21:25I agree. No, the Raiders are never going to miss.

21:28That was the least of your concerns. That was the least – I mean, I just didn't care.

21:33I could not have possibly cared less if he made it or missed it is the true answer.

21:37Like my interest level in the game dropped to zero as soon as the offense came up.

21:42How did your friend who had never watched a full game react to your reaction?

21:46How did that go? I mean, I had like – I mean, I had explained the overtime rules to him in a

21:51very methodical fashion, which was probably not surprising for any listener.

21:54And I had laid out all the pros and cons to each side and like kind of explained like what I would do and why.

22:01And he seemed to be on board with that.

22:03And I mean, he's a big sports fan. He's from Ireland.

22:06So like he's a big football with your feet fan.

22:09But anyway, he – I mean, he thought that our coach was complete chicken shit as well.

22:13So he was with us on that. I mean, the last thing I would add on this is that I mostly agree

22:19with you on the take of like – in most scenarios, I would choose to receive the ball.

22:24In this scenario, like I actually really liked Steichen's reasoning.

22:27He was asked why he chose to kick. And he said like the last thing I want to do is give Patrick Mahomes a fourth down.

22:33Like he had already converted so many third and longs in obvious passing situations throughout the game.

22:38Like I don't want to get a touchdown on the first drive and then give him a fourth down.

22:43Like if he's going to score a touchdown on us, I want to make him do it on three downs.

22:48And I was like that I thought was correct.

22:50And I thought that was why I would have kicked.

22:53But then I felt like once you make the decision to kick, like you kind of just have to adopt a win or lose mindset.

23:00Like I don't really think you can play – like to me, that's the aggressive choice is to kick.

23:05And say you're going to do whatever you're going to do.

23:08But your possession doesn't matter to me. Because what we're going to do is we're going to score a touchdown.

23:13And if we need to go for two, we're going to get the two.

23:17And that's how we're going to win the game.

23:19So that's to me like the aggressive mindset of kicking first.

23:22And then I just think it gets undercut by how they manage the end of the game.

23:26I think that's a great point. I think it's a great point that – I hadn't heard that reasoning from him.

23:32But in this scenario, it could be different. Yeah, I mean I don't – as I said, the models were split.

23:37And I wrote like several hundred words. If you want to read all the words that I wrote about it, there's a

23:43link in the Colts and Chiefs game right up in Stealing Signals for this week to last year's introduction where I broke

23:49down all the different angles of this. But we've already broke them all down here anyway.

23:53Oh, yeah. I agree with you that it's not going to be clear cut in every situation.

23:58And that's a great point that in this situation, not wanting to give Patrick Mahomes a fourth down.

24:02Before we get to the short view, which we do need to get to because we're classically 25 minutes in and haven't

24:08gotten to the short view, Colts pass right over expected.

24:11We spent a lot of time talking about that last week.

24:14A little victory lap for me on that. That was the third highest PROE individual game through two weeks.

24:19It was the second highest for week two. Super pass heavy right off the jump.

24:23They obviously still ran the ball effectively, but the rushing effective in week one led to play action passes.

24:28Their first play that I said on the show last week, play action pass over the middle of Xavier Worthy should be their first play.

24:34They ran first play, but second play was a play action pass over the middle of Xavier Worthy.

24:39They did one to Rasheed Rice like not long after that.

24:42One of those middle crossers for a catch and run for Rice.

24:45For Worthy, he kind of went down to the ground for it.

24:48But they clearly have that synergy. I just wanted to get your thoughts on, I mean, not so much a victory lap,

24:54but like that was what I've been envisioning. So obviously to me, it's like, that looks awesome and I think it's going to stick.

25:00He threw for 384 yards or 85 yards and like four touchdowns or something.

25:04Now the Colts defense is, I know a concern and you're concerned about them, but the pass efficiency for my homes and

25:10the fact they were able to continue to run efficiently and the way that they were marrying those things.

25:15And the argument that I've been making since I was doing the projections is like, now that they have Kenneth Walker, I'm

25:21actually using that as a boost to my homes is passing efficiency.

25:24I felt like his deep, his ability to hit tech one Thornton deep for multiple throws and just do a perfect seed

25:30to Xavier Worthy down inside the five that were the, I mean, the dude just can't catch.

25:34I've been one of his biggest supporters, but God leave like the guy sucks.

25:38Um, but Travis Kelsey has a monster game. He, one of the big things I said about my homes was he's going

25:44to get favorable coverages down the field that he hasn't had in years.

25:47Patrick Mahomes has not had, even though he's coming off an ACL and everyone's concerned about his passing.

25:52He has not been able to throw into one-on-ones downfield for years because they have not been able to threaten at the run game.

25:58And they were so dynamic so quickly this year that he's able to now get these one-on-ones to type one Thornton and hit multiple big throws.

26:05Those were 385 yards. He looks like he's going to compete for the passing title to me.

26:09Like, so am I too optimistic? Are you seeing concern?

26:12Well, I think as it pertains to my homes, I think you're, you could be right.

26:16The caveat that I placed on it in the summer when we talked about this and that I placed on it last

26:22week too, is saying, okay, if they pass that much, it's still not going to the receivers.

26:27Um, and, and that I would stand by because like in this game, so there's 47 pass attempts, four were throwaways.

26:32Then of the remaining 43, it's 11 to Kelsey, 10 to Walker, two to Johnson, one to Gray.

26:37So it's still only 19 wide receiver targets on 47 pass attempts, which is like a pretty low number.

26:42So like that was, that was kind of one of my answers when we were having this conversation of like, well, how

26:48does the projection not end up getting to the receivers?

26:50And like my point kind of has been like the, either the pass rate will be lower because they want to run

26:56the ball more or like if they want to pass, like, I just think that a lot of passes are going to

27:02go to the backs or like, you know, we talked about maybe, maybe Kelsey still ends up having a good year.

27:07I mean, Kelsey looks better to me than I thought he would.

27:11And so I've shifted up expectations on him. I think a lot of tight ends are going to look amazing against the

27:16Colts, to be honest, but he did look really good.

27:19Um, like our linebackers are awful. That was the one thing I hit the whole week was I just did a Kelsey

27:25ladder on like receptions, um, after watching our, our linebackers, but, um, who do the Colts play this week?

27:30So I could get a ladder, dude, Schultz, dude, he's going to have like 15 catches without Nico against the Colts.

27:35He's going to eat. He's just going to absolutely eat.

27:38I can't wait. I can't wait for, to just get eroded by Schultz going 14 for 92, but, um, like, like the Christopher Columbus of receiving lines.

27:45Anyway, um, I, uh, that, that would be my, that would be my one contention is that like, I still think it's

27:51going to be a lot of Walker targets, uh, which is great for my homes and it's great for Walker.

27:56It's like better for Walker. I think they're going to get a, find a way to get more targets to Emmett Johnson, who continues to look incredible.

28:03I'm, I'm still not sold that like, this is going to eventually work for rice, um, would be where I still stand.

28:09Like, I don't know where you're at on, on him specifically worthy.

28:12I've like had, the same take on worthy for three years.

28:15It's like, I think this dude totally sucks. He is going to keep getting opportunities and he's not very expensive.

28:20So I'm like always half in half out. And like, that's just probably never going to change.

28:25But right. Rice, I guess is more interesting. Cause I've been, I've been trying to sell him and I've been able to sell him in, in like dynasty.

28:32Yeah. I've been seeing that on the dynasty stuff.

28:35And I don't think that's crazy for you to do.

28:37I did see that they played two pretty heavy man teams in the first couple of weeks and the calls play a man.

28:43And there's, you know, the whole thing that rice is not really a man beater.

28:47He is a zone weapon, but just generally speaking, if they're doing a lot of like under center play action, passing in

28:53these things, like that's going to be like, the point is they're, they're running that against man more.

28:58Like the old offense, it was like shotgun drop back.

29:00Every time when teams are dropping in the zone, they have more DBS on the field.

29:05The whole point that I've been making is like, don't get into against demand looks.

29:09They'll get into one-on-ones and these things. If they're doing under center, you know, run looks and then play action off of

29:14that, you don't need really rice to sit down in a zone necessarily.

29:18Like you, you may, but the whole 31% targets per out run because of the old type of the offense may not

29:24carry over relative, like regardless of, of the defense that you're playing, so to speak.

29:28But I think rice is probably going to be okay.

29:30I think he's going to like, as far as the production goes, I think he's going to be bad relative to, to ADP as well.

29:37Like I, I'm not optimistic about him. I think the stuff that you, I've seen you talk about with the dynasty stuff

29:43where you're looking to sell him and you've been able to sell is really sharp.

29:46I saw you writing about that and the thinking about thinking thing, and then reporting back that you've been able to get

29:52those deals done at like full price. You didn't even have to sell as low as you wanted to.

29:57I really liked that as I, as I saw that in some of your work that, the line of thought and the

30:03timing obviously is so important because a lot of people like to do the sell highs, sell lows and sell, sell low or whatever, buy high type stuff.

30:10Like after it's like impossible to actually get a real price, like you're talking about selling low without really having to sell low.

30:17So I think it's a pretty, a pretty sharp take by you.

30:20Like even if he does rebound and have a good year, you're still able to recoup some real value there.

30:25So it's not like you're, you're getting smashed and that's kind of like a whole part of the dynasty game.

30:30At any rate interesting, interesting takes. I guess I hadn't fully captured that perspective that you had about the wide receivers.

30:36Cause I, the way that I was, I was framing it was like when I, when I was working through the projections

30:42and like, not just to you, to everyone I've talked to about it, including like on the ET pod with, with Jack and Mark.

30:48And like a lot of the other things I did was like, who's going to catch the passes for the Kansas city.

30:54Cause there is going to be target volume out there.

30:56I know people said the backs like that Walker would catch a lot.

31:00And I think maybe you had mentioned that, but one of the things, whenever I'd bring up rice or worthy, I would

31:06always be like, or else Kelsey is going to be a smash.

31:09And I'm like, weirdly into that, even though he's going to be 37 in October, I never really took any Kelsey, but

31:14I, I had him ranked way higher than I would normally have a guy that old.

31:19That's like, like probably. I have some Kelsey and like, I felt similarly about Kelsey to worthy, which was like, I hate this.

31:25Like I actively hate that I'm doing this, but like, I, I would rather make the bet here than on rice.

31:30Like, but it doesn't feel comfortable, but I, I could, I don't have like a ton of Kelsey, but I think I'm

31:36like roughly at market on, on Kelsey. Yeah. I I'm very curious if we're the, I mean, God, we're the, he just

31:42looks like he's not good though, man. Like he's so tricky.

31:45It's not just the drop. It's the, he gets like the end of rounds and he like the way he just slams on the brakes and space.

31:52Sometimes like you're a speedster, man, run with some like conviction.

31:55There's the, it's bizarre. Whenever he came out when way back when he came out, I remember being the one thing I always had an issue with.

32:02I liked that he earned volume all throughout college, that they wanted to get the ball in his hand, that they wanted

32:08to use him a lot of different ways, that he had a low eight out one season and a high, it to

32:13get a high eight out as a vertical threat and got a ton of targets per route at for a high eight on.

32:20And his weighted targets per out was massive when you factor in the air yards.

32:24And then the next year they brought up, but the efficiency was bad.

32:27The yards per target was bad, but they said that was all Quinn yours.

32:31The next year they brought it way down. And suddenly he had a low eight out, a lot of manufactured touches and

32:36like an even bigger targets per out run, like a lot of volume at a lower depth.

32:41I'm like, look, this is great. Usually college teams know how good their players are.

32:45They want to get the ball in his hands.

32:47He also didn't have great yards per target. Even when you could depth control that, that other season.

32:52And that was the one concern for me was always the yards per target with him going back to the rookie year.

32:58I've been probably more optimistic than you throughout, but when I've written about it, it's always been like, can he be efficient enough?

33:04Because, you know, people were blaming the Quinn Ewer stuff.

33:06Is it because of Quinn Ewers at Texas? I'm willing to make this bet at cost.

33:11And I mostly have been able to, especially because he was so young, age 21, rookie all through his rookie season.

33:16Didn't turn 22 until the April of the following year really hit late.

33:20Actually was getting real volume in the last month of the regular season.

33:23And through a four game playoff run that final season, not just the stuff against the Eagles.

33:28He had a big catch the week prior in the AFC championship to help clinch that game.

33:32I mean, he was better at that at the end, the last two months of his rookie season.

33:37He was better in that two months than he's been at any other time in his NFL career by a lot.

33:42But the next year, obviously he hurts his shoulder in week one.

33:45We don't really get to see a lot. Reed acknowledges this off season.

33:49Hey, you know, we didn't really use him in a lot of the ways we wanted to, but obviously he got healthy enough to play last year.

33:56And there were some of these efficiency issues last year back to the rookie season.

34:00Part of what I was willing to bet on going into year two was like, they got a lot of the manufactured

34:06stuff, but he wasn't connecting with my homes deep, but some of that was my homes overthrowing him a lot in the rookie year.

34:12And it was like, man, they just got to get that timing down.

34:15They're going to hit. They like, don't even run them on the deep stuff anymore.

34:19They, he obviously gets a, like a more like a deep intermediate target in this game and drops it down inside the five.

34:25Taequann Thornton is like, since to be like, like since last year, obviously worthy was hurt, but like, is like money on deep targets.

34:32And it's like catching everything that has like 30, 40, 50 area arts.

34:35He brings it in and it's like, okay, well you don't need to throw deep to worthy anymore because my homes can

34:41connect with the other guy pretty easily. So obviously this isn't a problem for my homes.

34:45And now it's like, I mean, anyway, like being back in on where that he was so cheap.

34:50I wrote in field tippers at the end of last season.

34:53I didn't want to be an unworthy again. I like legitimately didn't.

34:56I have real concerns about even after he came back from the injury, the lack of production throughout the second season that

35:02like, that he's not a good enough player. And he was so cheap this year.

35:06Now, obviously people will point out that it doesn't matter.

35:08Like Jalen Coker was going around where he was going.

35:11Why wasn't I taking Jalen Coker? I've always liked Jalen Coker because I was taking worthy on every freaking team.

35:16I have so much Xavier worthy. I still think that could hit for people that, you know, I don't think it's like totally dead.

35:23I mean, it's, it's like you're right about the pass rate stuff.

35:26It looks like it's going to rebound. I still don't think it's, it's going to be at like the height of the homes era.

35:32And I assume you don't either, but it's, it's, it's right.

35:35It looks like they're going to throw the ball.

35:37And like, I think that clearly they're going to throw the ball more to the running backs now than they did when

35:43they had like checko and cream hunt and whatever, but like there are still going to be targets to receivers.

35:48We do still have real concerns about rice. Thornton is still limited.

35:52So I still think worthy is going to have games.

35:54I mean, he, he was fine in this game.

35:57Like he looked bad. He scored like 13 points.

35:59Like he got a touchdown. So yeah, it's like he like, you know, I don't think he had a very good real

36:05life game, but he, he was probably like a top 20 scoring wide receiver this week or something largely gets to the touchdown.

36:11So that's what happens when you play in a good offense.

36:14But it feels a little bit like the second year for sky more where they were using sky more early in the year.

36:20And I was like, yeah, they were still using him.

36:22And I was like, well, at least they're still using him, but he looks terrible.

36:26He does not look like he's worked into the offense.

36:29And then it went down, down, down throughout the season.

36:32And whoever was the rookie that year, I think it was Rasheed Rice.

36:35Yeah. Late in the, and then he worked up.

36:37I couldn't remember if it was a rice year or the worthy year, but he worked up into sort of like the more clear top role.

36:44I think that's going to happen to Xavier worthy.

36:47And I think it's got to be Jalen Royals or we were talking a little bit about Cyrus Allen.

36:52Like maybe he comes on late, but they're not even really using him.

36:55No, they're not Jalen Royals scoring a touchdown in week two was somewhat intriguing to me.

36:59That wouldn't surprise me if he ends up being interesting.

37:02Yeah, we'll see. I mean, they like his blocking, I think, because I thought, I felt like he was playing a lot

37:08and like the three tight end sets and stuff.

37:10And it was like a goal line play touchdown.

37:13So I don't know, but I mean, if they'll, if they use him a little bit more, we'll see.

37:18They threw to type one, Thornton short as well.

37:20They threw a crosser, a drag route to Thornton.

37:22And I was like, Ooh, that's interesting. I kept saying in the off season, he only caught 19 balls last year.

37:28He was a rotational deep threat, but if they're going to start moving him down, maybe he winds up with a more, maybe he's more of a fixture.

37:35Yeah. Yeah. And I do think rice, I mean, the one thing that rice, I think is like indisputably good at as the yak stuff.

37:42And so I do think he's eventually going to get more of the screens than worthy.

37:46If worthy continues to like, not break any tackles ever on these bubble screen plays.

37:50Um, like it's, it's crazy how easy he goes down now.

37:53I mean, they, I always say about fourth down decisions.

37:55One of the things I've always said is the best way to understand what you think the right way, right decision is

38:01on fourth down is to root against a team when they're at fourth down.

38:05And what are you hoping that the opposing coach does the best way to determine what you think of Xavier worthy is

38:11as a Colts fan on Sunday night, every time that they would go to throw a screen and it was a 37 year old Travis Kelsey.

38:18I was terrified. If it was four to one running Xavier worthy.

38:21I was like, he's not getting more than four yards.

38:23Anyone gets a finger on him. He is going down or where they would throw a deep shot.

38:28If I saw two, I was like, fuck, it's tight.

38:31Quan. Like he's going to catch it. As soon as I saw worthy, I was like, I don't care how good this ball is.

38:37He is not coming down with this. You have just, I felt so safe.

38:41I felt so safe. Like the homes throws this absolute seed down the field.

38:44And as soon as I saw number one, I just like relaxed.

38:48I was like, this is going to work out.

38:50Okay. It is over for Xavier worthy. With that said, we can move on because you have absolutely perfectly encapsulated the experience.

38:56What do we have for the short view? All right.

38:58Unfortunately, we have a bunch of injuries. So speaking of guys getting buried, I mean, I'm not even going to get to all the injuries.

39:05There's a ton that are like of entirely indeterminate severity that I'll kind of run through.

39:09Like Barkley got an MRI yesterday. He might play, might not doubt.

39:12All has a toe injury seems on the doubtful side of questionable.

39:16Aaron Jones is dealing with soreness after he had to get put through a meat grinder of a rain game with like 90% touch rate.

39:22Caleb's got the hamstring injury might miss one or two weeks.

39:25DJ Moore's not practicing today. He might miss this week.

39:28I'm sure I'm missing some more. Nico flowers are ones we talked about last week.

39:32Those are kind of like the shorter term. Maybe they play this week.

39:35Maybe they don't injuries or any you wanted to hit there.

39:38Otherwise, I wanted to get to some of the longer term injuries.

39:41Well, the Caleb thing's a bummer, but it does need to be noted that like, like they weren't struggling all game.

39:47I mean, I think people are probably pretty aware, but with Caleb in there, they were struggling throughout that game.

39:52Doesn't mean I think they're going to, they're going to struggle all year or anything like that, but it was fascinating to

39:58see the flip from the 59 point week one, obviously.

40:00And you know, the reason I bring that up is you still have the Loveland stuff and, and people are really out on Loveland.

40:07It seems like it, what I'm seeing on social after what I wrote in week two.

40:11I mean, you said it on the show last week, he may be held into block a little bit more.

40:16His route rate was down a little bit in week two.

40:19That makes sense based on the blitzing nature of Brian Flores.

40:22Cause what I think we learned from them in week two struggling was the Carolina game where they didn't get Loveland and

40:28burden and a dunze involved in these still got a 59 point game out of it.

40:32That was not like, Oh, burden and Loveland and a dunze don't even matter.

40:36They can score 59 points without them. It was a warning sign that they didn't get their passing game.

40:41Like they're good players in their passing game involved.

40:43They were just able to do incredible stuff with Caleb scrambling with Deandre Swift running all over the Panthers.

40:48And with common guy, you know, breaking for a long touchdown run, it was all ground game.

40:52It's six rushing TVs in that game. We talked about it.

40:55Swift had three men. I had the long one.

40:58Caleb had two. They come into the next week.

41:00They're not able to establish the run the same way.

41:03And they're not also able to get any of the, the important players that going in the passing game.

41:08Khalif Raymond has a solid role again for people who have long Loveland to add people pick.

41:12I thought it was a solid pick, especially in terms of opportunity costs relative to, to powers McBride.

41:17But McBride looks like he's the, I mean, he's so good at football.

41:20He's so fun to watch. Been saying he's my favorite player in the NFL for the last few years.

41:25He looks like he's going to be completely unstoppable.

41:28He's a complete focal point of this past game.

41:30This team is obviously not as bad as we were sold.

41:33Uh, the Cardinals and you know, he's, he's their entire dude.

41:36Like love's not doing as much as like week two with love was weird.

41:40Anyway, I don't want to go into all Cardinals thing, but, um, McBride looks incredible obviously.

41:44And he's, I think he's going to like, going to be a massively valuable tight end one for anyone who has him.

41:50So that like, you know, taking Loveland around later than McBride is going to look terrible.

41:54Regardless is the point because McBride looks awesome. But as far as like Loveland and then the other part of the Loveland

42:00thing that I think is really tough is you have really interesting stuff happening for a Ronda Gadsden, like both of the

42:05tight ends ahead of him go on IR and like all the stuff we talked about with Gadsden, like who, nobody had

42:11a better run out in week two than Ronda Gadsden, as far as the different things that we've been talking about since the off season.

42:18I mean, he actually, he ends up having a touchdown and looking good again.

42:22He's caught all four targets. He's gotten his route spiked.

42:24And then both of the tight ends in front of him hit IR.

42:28We're in the same game, the same week, like a Ronda Gadsden, great pickup right now.

42:32We get the Terrence Ferguson. Well, Kohler actually did not hit IR.

42:35They, Oh, I'm sorry. They thought he would go on IR.

42:38Then they said after the surgery, they changed plans.

42:40So he's not going to go on IR. I don't think he's going to play for probably at least two weeks, but he might not miss four.

42:47Interesting. I did not see that. I think he impacts Gadsden way less.

42:51I've, I've always thought it was in Joku. It was the bigger problem for him anyway.

42:55So, um, Waller has a two TD game and his routes came up.

42:58I don't know how high that ceiling is going to be, but he's vaguely interested.

43:02And the point I'm just making is there's a lot of the late round.

43:06Like, I think Sadiq's going to wind up like producing to some degree that they've been using him a little bit.

43:12Um, but you know, mostly what we've seen just in the last week from Terrence Ferguson, Gadsden, Waller, there's a lot of

43:17late round guys that are probably, uh, don't Schultz and a lot of like those types of dudes, uh, looking good.

43:23Um, there's a lot of production that if you're, you know, if you took love one in the third round, you her

43:29fourth round, like you needed more than what we're getting.

43:31Um, anyway, the, all of that is relevant. Like the tight end landscape is relevant.

43:35McBride being as good as he is. And like some production coming from behind at tight end is relevant.

43:40Having said that my read on the bears is like, especially after Caleb gets back.

43:44And ideally that's not too long of an injury.

43:47It sounds like he's, he's missing this week, but maybe one to two weeks.

43:50Is that kind of what we're hearing? Like that's what we're hearing.

43:53Yeah. When it, when it comes back, like I just, I'm not, I'm not looking at weeks one and two from the

43:59bears offense as like, this is what they want their offense to be the full season.

44:03I think they were trying to establish that they could run the ball in such a good way that they could then throw off of that.

44:10Kind of like what the chiefs did in week one, then then into week two.

44:14And when they throw, I mean, burden's been fine, but the routes have been really disappointing after they were disappointing all of last year.

44:21I've been concerned about burdens routes. A dunes. I look like is good, but he looks more just like a good secondary receiver than like a superstar.

44:28I still believe it's all right there for Loveland to be like the breakout year to age 22 beast of a tight

44:34end that he was at the end of last season.

44:36And I think he's going to have a lot of good games going forward.

44:40When Caleb comes back, now that we have the Caleb injury, I don't know.

44:44I was, I wanted to get your thoughts on that too.

44:46I remain pretty optimistic on Loveland largely because, you know, had you told me through two weeks that one of burden or

44:52Loveland was like a massive failure, I would have thought the most likely reason was that Rome was a lot better than

44:58I anticipated and a lot more involved than I anticipated and that the other of burden or Loveland are the status themselves as a superstar.

45:05But the fact that really all three have been pretty disappointing, um, I think is, is just, is interesting and it's surprising.

45:10And it tells me that it's kind of all still out there for any of the three of them that want to go and grab it.

45:17Um, I mean, burden has been the one that has been the most involved.

45:21So like his, like, like he's had the highest rate of targets at the highest rate of first three targets.

45:26Um, when he's been on the field, like just watching the games, it felt, it's felt like he has been the one

45:32that they've like designed the most primaries around. You're right that the routes have moved around on him and they actually dropped in week two.

45:39I was watching, um, like the, the, the awesome QB school stuff where they, they, and you can see the all 22

45:44on there and you can kind of see who's out there in the flow of the game.

45:49And, um, it felt to me like burden kind of got like a bit of an in-game punishment where they were, they're being rotational throughout the game.

45:56Um, but there was multiple times where he just ran the wrong route.

45:59Like one time he ran directly into a guy.

46:02And then the next time, uh, there was a play where Rome and burden were in 12 personnel and they both ran ins like directly into each other.

46:09So it was like clearly one of them ran the wrong route.

46:12Cause that's not how you would ever design a two man row concept.

46:16And then like for the next two drives, like, I don't know if I saw burden and 12 personnel, he mixed in,

46:22he played in 11, but Raymond was taking a lot of his reps in, in 12 personnel.

46:26So I'm pretty sure burden was the one that was running the wrong route in that scenario.

46:31And I felt like it's like burden. And he also had a drop in this game.

46:35I mean, I kind of think burden is, is a little bit of what he's been, which is, I think he's the

46:41most naturally talented pass catcher on the team. And I also think he is just not like, doesn't necessarily have as many

46:46of the little things down all as consistently. Like even on Caleb's pick burden kind of ran to get covered and he like led himself in.

46:53I mean, Caleb threw a horrible ball, but like burden could have just settled.

46:57I thought like in space and Caleb probably finds him more easily in, on a scramble drill play instead of burden just runs directly into the defender.

47:04And then Rome is like not getting drawn up a lot of easy targets.

47:08Like he's continuing to run. I think more of the difficult routes to get targeted on.

47:12He's not been focused on heavily in terms of any of the first read stuff.

47:16Part of that could be injury week one, but it was also kind of true in week two.

47:21And so Loveland hasn't been obviously a huge part of the focus either, but I don't feel like the other guys have

47:26closed the door on him by any stretch. And so I remain pretty optimistic and he's the one that I feel best about in a vacuum.

47:33So like if none of the three have really done enough to separate in two weeks, like I'm going to probably stick

47:39with the guy that I have the highest degree of priors on.

47:42Cause I, I just don't think that they're going to run their entire offense all year through Kalief Raymond.

47:47And I mean, it's also not like they're running their offense through Kalief Raymond, to be clear.

47:52Like he's, he's, he's gotten some stuff that looks in the flow of the offense.

47:56A lot of the stuff like it gets the bears, like he's running these like running back shutdowns and just like either nothing's open or there's pressure.

48:03And so they're, they're throwing outlets to Kalief Raymond, but I don't think that those are like the goal of this play

48:09was to get the ball to Kalief Raymond on, on like a balloon screen.

48:12I think he's basically running, you know, what was, what would be a check down, but they're keeping the running back into

48:18block because of Flores and stuff like that. So I think that we will see Raymond produced in the hierarchy.

48:23And I, I definitely expect their offense to look a lot better in games than our pouring rain against Brian Flores.

48:29Yep. I think that all makes sense. What are the big injuries?

48:32Yeah. So, I mean, you hit on, you hit on the chargers tight ends, which is huge for Rondae Gadsden.

48:37We, we touched on it really briefly, but I'm happy to hear more thoughts on that.

48:41Dallas Goddard is going to miss some time. Unfortunately, the twink was placed on short-term IR to start the season.

48:47Cause he's not good. Um, so he can't be activated until week five, but they did sign Zach.

48:51Wait, Oh, Eli Sowers. Is this not a bit that I've made you familiar with?

48:55No. Um, I, I've, I've started referring to, uh, maybe this was only ship chasing.

48:59I brought this up, but I've started referring to tight end archetypes as, as like ones that don't block, uh, as twinks

49:05and the, uh, the more Nate Borkutcher type as bears.

49:08And people can look that up and where that fits in the spectrum.

49:11I don't think I even know what twink means, but I do know what a bear is.

49:16I think you want to be an otter. Like ideally like Trey McBride is, is an otter.

49:20Okay. I don't, I don't know what that means either.

49:23For the listeners, Ben has plausible deniability. Exactly. I genuinely don't know what an otter means.

49:27I know a bear is a, I thought it was like a big hairy homosexual man.

49:31Is that not? That's correct. Okay. I don't know what a twink is.

49:35Twink is the opposite of that. An otter is somewhere in the middle.

49:38Anyway, it's been, it's been a running bit that I started on ship chasing to the point that we refer to Eli Stowers as twink.

49:45Um, and, uh, Titans are now classified based on homosexual, uh, classifications.

49:48Okay. Correct. Um, it's just, it's a good way of explaining it to people.

49:52If you're, I'm not going to use this particular explanation, but you can go ahead and use it.

49:56Complicated. I feel like because of the sexuality connotation and football being so macho, if anyone, you know, if a football player

50:02ever heard themselves referred to as a twink, they may not like that.

50:05are you saying Eli Stowers won't come on the show?

50:08Yeah. Yeah. He may not come on the show.

50:10That's fair. Okay. Uh, anyway, Eli Stowers, um, flex tight end, if you prefer, um, uh, receiving focus, tight end.

50:16Um, it's a lot, it's a lot cleaner. I love the way it's not.

50:19If you really think about it, it works better in my mind.

50:23I like the way it comes out when you said that.

50:26Yeah. Well, I just, um, okay. So, Eli Stowers was on short term IR at the beginning of the season.

50:31So he actually can't even be activated for two more weeks.

50:34They did sign Zach Ertz. Um, so I don't know, um, if that matters to you as much as the Gadsden one,

50:39other big injuries, Alec Pierce, I mentioned off the top, he's going to miss.

50:43I mean, it sounds like, it sounds like at least four to six weeks.

50:47I'm guessing he probably just misses the season to be honest.

50:50Um, he's going to try and deal with rehab.

50:52And then if that doesn't work, you would get surgery.

50:55Um, but it's the same injury that's been bothering him all year long.

50:58Uh, Jonathan Brooks is going to miss six to eight weeks.

51:01I think was it six to eight. Yeah. With a core muscle surgery, Jaden Reed is going to miss an indeterminate amount

51:07of time with a really scary back, um, and or neck injury.

51:10Um, we have really have no idea on the timeline there.

51:13And then the two quarterbacks, Jaden Daniels is going to miss.

51:16Um, it sounds like at least three to six weeks, um, might come back with a brace, but it doesn't sound like

51:22they've made like a completely final decision or not on whether he'll undergo surgery.

51:25It sounds like he's preferring to not, but we'll see if that becomes the final decision.

51:30Surgery would end his season. Um, and then Jackson Dart did get surgery.

51:33His season is over. So, um, probably the biggest thing I'm curious about is your thoughts on these two really talented mobile,

51:39but now kind of increasingly injury riddled quarterbacks. But I, I would love to hear your thoughts on any of the other guys too.

51:45If you want to attack on them, the Daniels, I'm still, uh, I'm still so confused about the new title, tight end classifications.

51:51No, I'm kidding. I, it was actually, I was, I started thinking about Jaden Reed cause, um, anyway, we'll get to that.

51:57Was the Daniels update is one that I don't think I was aware of.

52:01You said the injury there, the surgery is recommended.

52:03If he gets surgery, it's going to be the end of a season.

52:06He doesn't want to get surgery. Is that what you just said?

52:10I don't know if I'd say, I don't know if I'd say recommended, but there's basically two options.

52:14So he can come back and play with the brace, in which case he would still miss at least probably three weeks.

52:20And he tried to do that last year and he got knocked out of the game last year with this exact same injury against the Vikings.

52:27He got, he fell on his elbow hard and they pulled him out of the game.

52:31The game was already going poorly. It felt like he probably could have stayed in, but like they, they pulled him out fairly quickly in that game.

52:38Right? So we could do what he did last year.

52:41And in which case he could probably be back in three, four or five weeks, play with a brace, non-throwing elbow, um,

52:47and, and play, and try to play the rest of the year.

52:50Or, or he did surgery this off season after he did that last year.

52:54No. And that's, that's been a point of contention from a lot of the medical folks is that like he was, his

52:59elbow was far more susceptible to what just happened because he didn't get the surgery because each time that you dislocate it,

53:05like even though it heals itself, it doesn't probably a better way to say it, but it doesn't heal, I guess, fully

53:11enough to the point that you, the more times it happens, the more, um, injury prone you are in that area.

53:16And so if he continues to play on it, he's only going to get to be at risk of this happening a third time.

53:23I mean, that'll be mitigated severely if he's wearing a brace.

53:26Um, and, and I assume he would be wearing a brace if he plays, at some point this year.

53:31what would you get tackled as a quarterback, especially a quarterback with mobility.

53:34That's what happened with the Vikings game. He was wearing a brace, but he fell on that.

53:39The second time wasn't that he twisted it. It was that he fell.

53:42And the impact of the elbow was enough that, you know, it jarred things loose enough to whatever, create some pain.

53:48And they took him out of the game. And that, that would be something you'd have to deal with.

53:53I know Kurt Warner was like, I played with a dislocated elbow and my non throwing.

53:57And like, yeah, maybe like, maybe he wouldn't have been knocked out of that Vikings game.

54:01And then they kind of just shut him down again last year.

54:04If they were like competitive, maybe he can play with a brace.

54:07You're saying it would be like three, four or five weeks.

54:10If like, you won't be wearing a brace and playing in like one week.

54:14No, that, I mean, that's the, that's, that's, I know Kurt Warner said he did that, but I haven't seen any like

54:20Twitter doctor suggest that that's a realistic possibility. It's, it sounds like the, it sounds like the scenario in which he does

54:26not get surgery would be probably three to six weeks.

54:28And he might even be placed on IR. We'll, we'll find that out probably soon if that happens like short term IR.

54:34And, and what's been reported is that he does not want to get the surgery.

54:38Cause he wants to keep playing this year. If he gets the surgery, he'd miss, I mean, maybe he could, it's supposed to be like three months.

54:45So like theoretically he could come back at the very end of the season, but more than likely that would be the whole season.

54:51So, I mean, basically we're in a holding pattern.

54:54I mean, if you have Daniels right now on like a managed team, I like, wait, would you cut him?

54:59Would you keep him? Like, like, especially like FFPC deep bench stuff.

55:02I was definitely keeping him, but if it's like a Yahoo league, yeah, I would like, so the thing that happened with

55:08Jaden Reed actually is, I mean, I just have my email open on a different screen and I saw it, like I

55:14get the ad drop stuff for Scott fishbowl, which is a super deep format and the wide receiver stats are kind of jacked up.

55:20And I like, like in a positive way. And I've been playing like a mostly wide receiver heavy lineup and somebody cut

55:26Jaden Reed and everything I've seen on Jaden Reed has been, we don't know anything, but it's been mostly optimistic.

55:31He tweeted out on, I was just searching actually on Twitter and he tweeted out on September 20th and doing very well.

55:37His wife shared, I haven't watched the video, but a video that I saw when I was just searching on, she shared

55:43it on social about, yeah, I mean, obviously incredibly scary, but she had noted that he's doing very well.

55:48Matt LaFleur's most recent comment was, it's too early to tell if he'll like even be playing again this year.

55:53He's got a lot going on. Obviously, you know, he wasn't going to play on Thursday night of this week.

55:58And I don't necessarily expect him to play in week four, you know, 10 days from now, but if there is no

56:04like real structural damage and some of those things, and if they are able to, I mean, we just, we haven't heard anything.

56:10And so I wouldn't pick them back up while we were talking because I had like, I had Kalee Freeman on this team.

56:16Like it's a 22 round league. Right. So I cut Kalee Freeman to add Jaden Reed.

56:20Cause like I could see in week six, seven, eight, I could, I'm holding Jordan Tyson in this league, even like this,

56:26this draft was before the Tyson injury, but I drafted Tyson.

56:29I'm not cutting Tyson. I drafted Jacoby lane. I'm not cutting Jacoby lane.

56:32Cause these guys, when they come back are going to be more usable than anything that's available on free, you know, in free agency in a league.

56:40This deep, especially cause it's like juice to wide receivers.

56:42And so people like me, I have like 15 wide receivers in my 22 things.

56:46Like there's a ton of receivers that are rostered in this league.

56:49Anyway, the point I'm saying I picked him up purely as a speculative thing, because we don't know the timeline.

56:55It was my same answer would be the case for Jane Daniels.

56:58We don't know until we know more. I wouldn't be cutting him.

57:01Like if he, if he thinks he can play through a brace and Kurt Warner played through a brace and played a

57:07whole season, if he thinks he it's early enough in the season.

57:10So what, when this happened last year, he missed some time and then they tried to play him with a brace, but their season was done.

57:17It's early enough in the season for the commanders that, you know, if he, if we find out in a week that

57:23he's going to play like in a week, now they're already over.

57:26Oh, and two, but like, and they're playing the Seahawks this week, they're going to probably go to own three, but if

57:32they're able to get to their week seven by, for example, that's four games away and they're two and four.

57:37I mean, I, that, that requires them to go two and two in the next four games.

57:41And they probably won't, they get your Colts at home.

57:44They get your giant, they get not your giants, but they get my Colts in London.

57:48Ooh, London. And then they, they are the home team for that.

57:51And then they're at the 49ers on a Monday night in week six.

57:55So probably I would guess that they're not going to be two and four, but if they're even two and four at

58:00the week seven by, does he not probably play?

58:03So the IR thing is interesting because if he hasn't missed four games, you also get the bye week after that, but

58:09they haven't even made the IR declaration yet, which to me is like, they think he may play week five against the giants, right?

58:15Like now if they're on four at that point, what is like, I don't know, but like, it's early enough in the

58:21year that they may try to play through it.

58:23If he falls on it, like you did last year, it's early enough in the year that like he may come back in the game.

58:30It's the second time it's happened last year. It happened in a lost season and they want to protect their, their future quarterback.

58:36Now it's like, if they just let them be gone for this whole season, there's a different response for the player, for the team.

58:42It's like, you're now you're feeling like your whole career is like in jeopardy because you can't stay healthy.

58:47The second time it happens, the player is like, no, I want to play through it.

58:51Like I, like I need to have a good third season.

58:54I can't like have both my second and third season, the loss to the same injury.

58:58Now people are going to make Robert Griffin, the third comparisons and stuff.

59:02I mean, it's, he had a great rookie season.

59:04I don't, I don't know what's going to happen with this career.

59:07I do think it's plausible that this year goes different than last year is my point.

59:12And I wouldn't be cutting him yet because I would be interested to know more before I made that move.

59:17That was sort of my whole point. Just like the Jane Reed thing.

59:20And, and I mean like how much, how much does this affect your perception of his like career?

59:25Um, so, I mean, I'm, I'm coming from this.

59:27I, I, I wrote him up pretty positively. Um, I, I've seen like, I know you don't, you know, focus a lot

59:33on dynasty or whatever, but I, I'm just kind of curious for your like football thoughts.

59:37Like, because I've seen that the sentiment in the dynasty community is very negative.

59:41And, and I've written about him being a pretty big buy.

59:44Like how, how do you, how worried are you about like this career going in that really negative?

59:49You, you know, you mentioned our G three direction versus like, it just remain a guy that you remain really high on.

59:55Cause I know you've always been high on him.

59:57Yeah. I remain, I remain pretty high on him.

59:59I'm obviously concerned that the guy, like he's very thin and coming out of college.

60:03The concern was that he got hurt a lot in college and he wouldn't be able to stay healthy.

60:08The big concern with him in the draft was like, he takes too many hits.

60:12The interesting thing is he hasn't really taken. And the elbow injury happened on a hit.

60:16He just fell. He got his foot stepped on.

60:19It's been weird. The, the, the, um, the injury, the rookie season, he had a long run and he slid and he kind of got grabbed from behind.

60:26And I think he like twist his back and he, uh, or whatever it was, what was it?

60:31A knee? Like, I can't remember what his injury ended up being that rookie year, but he left the game really early against the Panthers.

60:38And then for the next three or four weeks, he didn't, uh, run as much.

60:41And he wasn't throwing downfield as much. It was, maybe it was a midsection was a rib.

60:46Like, I can't remember. Yeah, that's right. It was a rib.

60:49It was a rib. It was a rib. Yeah, you're right.

60:52And so it affected his deep passing. I remember in writing, stealing signals, his deep passing was really bad for a month on a weekly basis.

60:59That was sort of like, and so like when I was running into Daniels going into year two, one of the big

61:04arguments I made was like, well, if you control for the fact that he played hurt for a stretch where he wasn't

61:10running as much and he wasn't throwing deep. And so his scoring was way worse and you control for what he had

61:16done in that rookie season, post season, his, his rookie year fantasy scoring actually looks a lot better.

61:21If you, you know, give him some credit for the post season games and, or take out the lower floor games where

61:27he was, you know, hurt or, and left the one game really early.

61:30And then I think like he played a little bit in week 18.

61:33And so if you look at his like point scoring as a rookie, it doesn't tell the whole story of how good

61:39he was for that full rookie season, including leaving some regular season games early and playing really good football in the post season games.

61:45He had a massive fantasy total in the post season.

61:48I say that from the perspective that I think he had like real differentiating scoring profile for fancy football as a rookie,

61:54but that first injury I was mentioning as well, like it was a little bit of a contact injury.

61:59The second, the elbow injury last year was one that he did not need to take a hit on.

62:04He scrambled, I think it was against the Seahawks and, and took a hit that like, it felt like he didn't need to take the hit.

62:11I already had in my notes before he got hurt in the first half of this Dallas game that he was taking too many hits.

62:17He was taking a bunch of hits in this Dallas game.

62:20It was frustrating me. I was like, I'm a big fan of his.

62:24I'm like, why do you take these hits? He was, he was even like, there was a couple where he, the D defense was like letting him slide.

62:31And he took forever to just like, he did the thing where he was like, maybe going to keep running.

62:36And then he, he finally slid and they didn't hit him.

62:39It was like, dude, just slide. Like they're letting you slide.

62:42Like if you start doing this, they're going to start hitting you.

62:45Well, even when you do try to slide, stop like tempting fate.

62:48It was bothering the heck out of me. I'm a huge Jane Daniels fan.

62:52As you mentioned, I think the talent is insanely high.

62:55I think anytime he's been healthy, he's shown that he was really good against the Eagles in the second half, really coming

63:01back in week one, almost let a comeback victory against the Philadelphia Eagles got him down to a situation where if they

63:06could have got a two point conversion, they would have a tie game very late.

63:10The injuries, that's a concern. The, the, the like RG three thing is like, he ended up like having a legit knee issue.

63:16And there was like the way that he produced as a rookie was like, maybe felt less sustainable.

63:21And then like kind of got found out. It felt like a little bit, it was more rushing oriented and it was less like he's a great passer.

63:28Uh, I think the Jane, Jane Daniels thing is like, he is a really good passer.

63:33I'm a little bit concerned about the rushing. I'm a little bit concerned about like what that means for a ceiling.

63:38I do think this is still a legitimate quarterback prospect that can throw the ball.

63:42And so when you talk about like, Oh, well maybe he gets less mobile as time goes on in those things.

63:48Sure. But if he's a legitimate quarterback prospect, I think there's a long career on the other side of these early career injuries.

63:54That are mostly, most, it seems like minor, like, or, or like fluky or like not things that are going to be.

64:00And it's the op, it's not the throwing elbow.

64:02So it's like, obviously I would expect this off season.

64:05They're going to do surgery on this, this elbow.

64:07Cause now it's, it's ruined both seasons and people are like, why don't they, when they get surgery after the first year, hopefully that addresses it.

64:14Hopefully it continues to, you know, to, to be healthy in the future.

64:17Hopefully he doesn't have a lot of other major injuries.

64:20I would probably put him as a higher injury risk player going forward.

64:23But as far as his career is concerned, I don't think it's like over, especially in the way that it feels like it is now.

64:30And so, yeah, to me, like you're right. I don't do a lot of dynasty stuff.

64:34And I, I often feel weird giving recommendations. Cause I, I think in, in terms of so much uncertainty and I'm like,

64:40God, there's going to be so much different a year or two years from now that I have such a hard time seeing the future for this player.

64:47One of the big things about Jane Daniels is he's had no help throughout his career.

64:51Jay, like Terry McLaurin, the rookie season, awful ancillary receivers, the second season, awful.

64:55Like, like you're thrown to Zach Ertz the whole time and everything.

64:58Debo Samuel was not good. They go and they get, um, they go and they get Stefan digs this year.

65:04I'm like, yeah, able to get some stuff out of him in, in week one and whatever.

65:08But like Stefan Diggs doesn't even look that amazing.

65:10It just, it doesn't look like anyway, the point I'm making is longterm.

65:14I, I actually think Jane Daniels is going to be a good quarterback and he actually has like a more of a

65:20ceiling than his, than his, um, thought because yeah, he's already been able to score a ton, even in bad situations.

65:25And you know, one of the things about it.

65:28This is a lost season is he's already lost.

65:30Laramie Tunzel. They ever get him behind a good offensive line to protect him a little bit better.

65:35That would be awesome. You know, then it takes away some of the scrambling.

65:38It takes away some of the hits that he's taking.

65:41It allows him to play a little bit more of a drop back quarterback.

65:45Um, yeah, I think, yeah, I think he's like probably what I was saying is I have a hard time with like calling guys dynasty buys or sells.

65:52I just, yeah, I'm glad to hear you say that about Daniels.

65:55Um, because like, I agree that he's a massive dynasty by, I think what I was going for most, what I was

66:01most curious to hear was just that you had the same conviction that this is still a stud.

66:06Like I remember coming off of his rookie season.

66:08I was pretty convinced like, this is a guy who's going to be a top five quarterback in the NFL for the foreseeable future.

66:14Um, as long as he stays healthy. And I was kind of fascinated that like some of the, you know, kind of

66:20NFL media types, like the top 10 lists or whatever, it felt like they wanted to make him prove it.

66:26Like he wasn't getting that universal treatment of being up there in the very elite class quarterbacks.

66:30And I mean, it's like now I've saw like someone wrote some article.

66:33I mean, it's just someone writing an article, but they were like, you know, if he misses this year, like, well, Jayden,

66:39the Jayden Daniels era be over and watch. Washington.

66:42And I've seen a lot of like dynasty folks in, I, on our streams being like, we got, you got to get out now.

66:48You know, he's, he can't stay healthy or he's not even that good.

66:51Um, he doesn't play in a sustainable way. That's a, that's a real, um, with sustained success as a quarterback.

66:57And I guess I just like fundamentally disagree. I think he's a legitimately special quarterback.

67:01I obviously agree. He needs to stay healthy. Um, but I, I guess I just have a lot of conviction that if

67:06he can stay healthy, that he can quarterback in a way that he can, that is sustainable to be an elite NFL real life quarterback.

67:13That's also of course, conducive to scoring a lot of fantasy points.

67:16Um, and so, yeah, I'm, I'm very in on him.

67:19I, I'm optimistic that he will, if he comes back this year, that he'll be productive and that the team will have a reasonable offense.

67:25And I'm super optimistic that if he can stay healthy over the longterm, that he's going to pay dividends.

67:30I'm, I may be a little bit less optimistic or like, I shouldn't say less optimistic, but certainly less confident about Jackson

67:36dart, who a lot of people had very mixed opinions of coming into the season.

67:40Everybody, I think quite correctly was feeling really great after week one and his performance and the whole operation.

67:45And then just like incredibly unfortunate that he suffers a season ending injury in week two, he's now going to be going

67:51into 2027 really just with not that much of a track record.

67:54Like what is your expectation for what the giants do here?

67:57And like, where, where are you out on dart?

67:59Like where, where do you foresee yourself being out on dart going into next year?

68:03The dart thing is tough, man, because I mean, I, I, I was out on him.

68:07He was the, I don't usually do a lot of like fades with quarterbacks.

68:11I always say, I think the quarterback market is probably the most efficient at this point because you know, the rushing stuff has long since been factored in.

68:19And when it's not with a guy like Malik Willis, I think there's legitimate reasons.

68:23And when it really wasn't with Kyler Murray, I thought there was potentially some, some pretty legitimate reasons there.

68:28Obviously we haven't really seen Kyler Murray, and a lot of the stuff is like factored in, like that gets factored in

68:33as like pretty relative to like team expectation. Obviously quarterbacks soak up a lot of the, you know, overall touchdown production and stuff.

68:39And so you get, anyway, I had dart as a fade this year.

68:43And the only reason I, and it's not like a victory lap, but the only reason I had him as a fade was, was injury risk.

68:50And then that's not even a victory lap. It was more.

68:53Cause I, again, I'm worried that he took too many hits, like real physical hits.

68:56I mean, I was just talking about this with, with Daniels.

68:59Daniels just takes hits that like, he shouldn't take it all because he's kind of small, but he's trying to avoid them.

69:05He just needs to like slide more. He's not trying to run guys over.

69:09Dart's like trying to run dudes over when he, like last year, like when he gets out and scrambles, he thinks he's a fullback.

69:15Um, the thing that's so like annoying about this to me is I do think darts a really good quarterback.

69:20I think he's a good passer. He had, um, meaningfully had the best, uh, downfield passing efficiency in his class.

69:26It was underrated, had a good rookie year. And then he's a good quarterback who like the, the other really specific, annoying

69:32element of him getting hurt in year two is Malik neighbors got hurt in year one, like right as they were going

69:37to get, start to get to play together. Like after Russell, you know, like neighbor started the year with Russell Wilson and then Scadaboo got hurt as well.

69:45And it was like, dart was supposed to be playing with these like Scadaboo look like this really fun rookie running back.

69:51He's supposed to be playing with this really fun year two receiver.

69:54One of the best in the league. They both get hurt and darts playing with Darius Slayton and, you know, Tyrone Tracy

69:59and Devin Singletary at running back and coming into this year, you're like, Oh, this is going to be fun to see

70:05the giants get to play together a little bit.

70:08I was actually pretty excited about that. Even though I had him as a fade, the other central thing I put on

70:13dart as a fade was that I didn't think a specific scoring in this offense would be so high that it was,

70:19would justify the injury risk relative to a lot of like a deep quarterback year, but I still thought he would be good.

70:25I still thought he would score. I just thought there's a lot of guys I wanted to bet on.

70:30Like Brock Purdy looks incredible. And I want to bet on like Bo Nix and he doesn't look incredible, but like, there's

70:36a lot of guys that you could make bets on in those rounds.

70:40Jared Goff, Jared Goff's been awesome so far through a couple of games.

70:43The dart thing, like I did expect him to be successful.

70:46I just didn't want to like, again, I don't think the specific injury that he had is anything that I was even considering could happen.

70:52But my concern was also you like quarterbacks, a high floor position.

70:56You, you get hit pretty hard that individual week when a guy leaves early and you take like a zero, like, or a very low score.

71:02And he's your starting quarterback. And I didn't want that like mid game injury risk, which I've talked a little bit this off season and other times.

71:10I think I mentioned on the show, because the person I remember reached back out to me, but somebody, because I've talked

71:15about it and I've written about it, this idea that these in-game injuries are on the rise and like, like quick rule

71:21outs because it's a longer season and player health stuff is more important.

71:25Guys don't play through things as much in this era.

71:27Like back in when I was a kid, dude, Donovan, Donovan McNabb played a game with a broken ankle once.

71:32Phillip Rivers played a game, I believe with a broken ankle once.

71:36Like these guys would play through stuff. Phillip Rivers played a game with a torn ACL.

71:40Torn ACL. Yeah. Sorry. He had a torn ACL.

71:42Like these guys would play with some stuff back in the day.

71:45And, and I'm not saying that the, the players, of today are weak.

71:49I genuinely don't believe that. I believe it's a, I don't think players should play with a torn ACL.

71:54They shouldn't. It's an organizational thing that it's like, we're going to protect our players more that like back in the day,

72:00they did not care about protecting their players. It's like, it was, it was probably wrong back then, but I don't know

72:05that the market has adjusted enough to this. And the, the thing that I said, I have talked about in my writing

72:11and some on the show is that the, the, somebody went and did some really cool research.

72:16One of my subscribers and messaged me about it, but he found that the incidences of, and the funny thing is I,

72:21God, I didn't remember his name last time. And then he messaged me and thanked me for talking about him the show,

72:27but I was like, I didn't even remember your name.

72:30And then I'm again, not remembering his name. So I strongly apologize to, I'm going to find it and I'm going to,

72:36I'm going to tell you later, but anyway, he did some quick research, you know, some, some quick coding on some player

72:41data and found that, you know, over multiple years and found that incidents of fantasy relevant players that were expected to play

72:47games and then got hurt and left games really early and didn't score any points was, was increasing over the years.

72:53Anyway, that happened to, and so that's, that's one of the reasons I've like vaguely was vaguely concerned about dart.

72:58None of this has anything to do with like what happens with dart.

73:02It's just me explaining my process, I guess, but I wasn't like significantly out on dart.

73:06I liked art as a player. And the injury now is, it's just a real big bummer.

73:10Cause we don't get to see him play with neighbors.

73:13Like I'm legit. Part of the reason I was explaining all that.

73:16Cause it's like, for people that know that I'm out on him is like, I wasn't like out on him as a player.

73:22And I'm not thrilled that we missed the whole season of him with neighbors.

73:26Like that sucks for football. Like I think he's good for two years.

73:29They never got to play together, right? Like now he doesn't get to play with neighbors again this whole year.

73:34I thought they're going to work together as neighbors got healthier.

73:37It worked together really well. And it's got a boo and man, like you missed the whole rookie contract to some degree.

73:43Well, like for neighbors, it was year two and then year three.

73:46And now it's going to be the final year of his rookie contract.

73:50He's already going to have probably signed an extension this off season when he next plays with Jackson dart.

73:55And it's like, it could be for the first time.

73:57And it's for dart. It's going to be year three of his, you know, quarterback, uh, rookie contract.

74:02And then anyway, it sucks. I'm, I'm just preaching to giants fans who are like, yeah, yeah, we know everyone got hurt

74:08last year and they're getting hurt again. Like no one likes when, when key players get hurt.

74:12Um, I'm bummed as far as darts actual value.

74:15Like, I still think he's good. Like, I don't know.

74:17What are you, where are you out on the dynasty stuff?

74:20I mean, I'm pretty, I'm pretty scared. I mean, he's just always been a guy that like the like football community has

74:26been, I feel like lower on than kind of the stats community.

74:29I liked art a lot. I hope he succeeds.

74:32I believe in him. I guess I do fear that he's probably going into a 2027.

74:36I thought I assume we'll be as the starter of the giants, but I guess I wouldn't say I'm a hundred percent

74:42sure of that with a new regime and with all the missed time and the fact that they'll probably be picking pretty

74:47highly in the draft, but if he's not starting for the giants, he'll certainly start elsewhere.

74:52And I do think he'll start for the giants, but I do think he's kind of now entering a do or die season.

74:58Like he hasn't proven, I think as much as Jaden Daniels has, for instance, he's only played basically half a season's worth of games.

75:04And if you, if next year he's up, there's another injury or he just starts really slow.

75:08I think that the whispers are going to come in pretty quick.

75:12And so I do get concerned a little bit for darts future.

75:15And I, I, I'm a little bit scared. I mean, to pertain strictly to this season, like what are your expectations for this offense?

75:21Like, do you, do you think we're getting, getting flamous back and we're getting, you know, a really fun season of Malik neighbors?

75:27Cause I mean, I feel like had you told people in July, you got a full season of Malik neighbors with James

75:33Winston, people would be pumped about that. Nobody seems pumped right now.

75:36I know part of that's the shoulder injury that app with Malik neighbors too.

75:40Part of it's that he just had one catch in a big game.

75:43I, I'm of the belief that Harbaugh will try to contain.

75:46Jameis. And like, we'll try to be a little bit more run heavy, but I don't know that you can do so fully.

75:52Like I remember when the Colts had Flacco playing for them.

75:55I don't think Shane Stiken woke up each morning of those Flacco starts and thought like, I'm going to uncork 50 today, you know, screw the run.

76:02I just think some of these quarterbacks that are like completely immobile and aren't that good, but can sustain high pass volume,

76:08just wind up falling into it because either you start kind of doing a lot more quick passing stuff because your running

76:14game suffers because you have no mobility and you can't do the bootleg or the under center stuff very effectively with them,

76:20or you just fall behind and then you're throwing and you can kind of pile up completions.

76:24Like I'm, I'm guessing that it is not full on box Jameis or even like Brown's carnival Jameis.

76:29But I, I think that there will be available production here.

76:32Probably the guy I'm most excited about would be Isaiah likely.

76:35Cause I, I think he's just going to get spammed with a lot of targets, but I, I also think neighbors, if

76:40his health holds up, we'll probably end up having a pretty solid season and I'm, I'm probably fading some of the FUD,

76:46but I know some of the FUD is injury based too.

76:49Yeah, no, I, I mean, I, I feel the same way about the Jameis stuff.

76:53I think it's going to be positive. I, I think, I mean, if you watch that game Monday night and he played

76:59most of the game, I think they were trying to kind of stick to a little bit of a run based plan,

77:05but like Jameis is going to let balls go.

77:07And I know neighbors ended up having a poor game, but like the game, you lose your starting quarterback game falls apart a little bit.

77:14It's, it's tricky. Right. And he's got the knee injury and let's just, I think it was a very understandable one catch game.

77:20He was also, you know, in a tough matchup.

77:22McDuffie's a good player. He very nearly would have caught that bomb, but McDuffie gets his hand, you know, gets his fingertips

77:28to it and redirects it at the last minute.

77:30They get an end zone target to him that just Jameis woefully under throws.

77:34Jameis missed a lot of throws in that game.

77:36I don't think he's going to miss that many.

77:39Right. I think there's an element there as well as like, he didn't practice a lot.

77:43He comes out and it's like, just chucking the ball around and he's missing throws that they'll clean up.

77:48Like, I think they'll clean up and practice a little bit.

77:51Like, Hey, you know, you, whatever it is, get your feet under you or something like he was, I just don't think,

77:57you know, he was as good in relief, you know, thrust into a game against the Rams on Monday night as will

78:02be dictated by the, or, or I don't think that will dictate or we'll, we'll predict how good he is, you know,

78:08at his average level throughout the rest, throughout the rest of the season and going forward.

78:12I think he'll be higher than that at his average level.

78:15There'll be ups and downs with James always, but there'll be some times where he rips some stuff.

78:20The James experience. Like I, yeah, no, I agree with you that like, they're not going to just like call full on

78:26passes and stuff, but like he, he does rip stuff.

78:28He, I don't know how you run an offense with James and don't allow him to throw to the deep intermediate and some of those things.

78:35Like, like, I just don't think that's going to happen.

78:38Um, the likely thing was interesting to hear you say, cause I don't, I guess I don't like, I'm not like out

78:44on that concept, but, likely looked good anyway. I don't know why James would, would meaningfully improve things for him.

78:49I think that they're going to have a lot more drop back volume, a large part because they're going to be worse.

78:55Um, and so they're going to play from behind more.

78:57I think that they're going to probably open up the offense a little bit more.

79:01Like, I just don't think that as much of the run based stuff is going to be as effective with a complete

79:07statue back there versus with Jackson dart. Like, I don't think you're getting able to run as many RPOs.

79:12I don't know that you're getting able to run as many under center bootlegs.

79:16So I think they're, you're going to see the pass rate come up.

79:19Yeah. I think that's really aggressive. I think that's really aggressive and ultimately to the wide receiver position.

79:24Like Jerry Judy was sixth in the NFL and receiving yards two seasons ago.

79:28This is a, like people were like, how could you be in on Jerry Judy last year when he played the worst season ever in 2025?

79:35He was sixth in the NFL and receiving yards in 2024 for people who don't like that was literally two years ago

79:40when most of that was with Jameis. He did that despite Deshaun Watson at the first half of that year in 2024 being awful.

79:47And, and Judy had like multiple one catch games the whole time with Jameis.

79:50He had like these monster games. And it was a, it was a lot of the shots on the deep intermediate stuff,

79:56deep crossers, and then the vertical routes. And I mean, one of the things we saw on Monday night was I, I

80:02pulled out in my writeup prairie yards for the first time this year.

80:05I don't know if I even used it last year.

80:08I used to write about prairie yards a little bit more, you know, in the early years, that was a fun kind

80:14of concept back in maybe 2022 or 2020, 2020.

80:16I don't know. I've been writing stealing signals for 10 years.

80:19Maybe I was writing that in 2017. I, who, who held the hell knows, but Malachi fields had a ton of air

80:25yards and I called them prairie yards. He wasn't close to catching any of them.

80:29They were just Jameis chucking the ball. But that's what Jameis does.

80:32When he extends a play, he looks downfield. He looks for the guy, the big, he big game hunts like, and that's,

80:38he ends up overthrowing fields on multiple, like like three long bombs that fields really has no shot at, but fields winds

80:44up with a ton of air yards in some of the stat.

80:47I mean, I'm sure some people don't count these as even air yards, but whatever your stat provider is like may, may differ.

80:53But the one I was looking at had fields with a ton of, a ton of air yards.

80:58And the point is just like, yeah, I think it could be interesting for, for likely for sure, because he's basically running wide receiver routes.

81:04But I just, I was saying like, my thought was like the bombs to fields.

81:08And, and I, I think it's good for neighbors, man.

81:11He almost caught that bomb. Like McDuffie makes a great play on it.

81:14They took an end zone shot to him. I think Winston is going to pepper neighbors with, with, with vertical volume.

81:20I hope that that's the case for sure. Um, the reason I was, I was more bullish for likely specifically is just

81:25the, I think that his route rate will be a lot higher in the Jameis version of the offense than what the

81:31giants idealized version of the offense was like his route rate in week one was, I think of the high sixties and

81:37it jumped up into the high eighties. I just don't think they're going to be able to play that under center working

81:43off the run style, which takes likely off the field more often.

81:46Whereas I think he'll now just be playing wide receiver.

81:49And I think it's going to be a bit more spread out.

81:52Um, and so I could see is I could see like the total pass volume increases for everybody, which increases the pie for everybody and helps everybody.

81:59But I think likely even as a higher route rate and higher total routes, um, which I think helps him based on the style of offense.

82:06I'll also note David and Joku, like Jared Judy was a huge winner.

82:09David and Joku himself had 58 targets and six games with Jameis back on the, on the Browns.

82:14So he, he, he will spread the wealth to everybody involved.

82:17If Jameis goes back and starts throwing for sure.

82:19I hope, yeah, no, I think it's great. I hope we get another like 497 yard, four touchdown, four interception performance from Jameis at some point.

82:26Oh my God. Yeah, no, I, so to be clear, I was, I, when I was questioning the likely thing, I, I've

82:32been writing about likely very favorably and I was not very into likely in draft season, but very favorably in the first

82:38two weeks and stealing signals, I was writing about like why specific, or was questioning why specifically it might be better for

82:43him than, than like the wide receivers or something.

82:46And I, I, I take the, the, the reasons you said all very, very as very valid.

82:50And I think it could be very good for likely to, for sure.

82:54I just, I, I agree with you. It's going to be good for everybody.

82:57Like the way that you broke it down was like, it's going to be good for everybody.

83:02They're going to, but the one key thing that you said about likely is his routes were way higher in trail script

83:08and they're going to be in more trail script.

83:10And that's, I, that's a good point. I take that as well, but yeah, it's going to be good for the passing game.

83:16They're going to have to throw and, and Jameis is gonna like, is gonna throw like the, it's just either they bench

83:22him or he's going to chuck the ball around.

83:24Like, I don't know if people weren't watching Monday night, but he was chucking the ball around like you and inaccurately, like

83:30it's not, it's not ideal, but like, I do think he'll, he will be able to accurately throw the ball sometimes.

83:36And that willingness to just rip it, to be a gunslinger.

83:39It's not maybe ideal for the giants. Well, it's certainly not, but like, like it's not, it's not definitely horrible from the

83:44perspective that if you do that stuff, you open up the game.

83:47At least you force defenses to, to defend areas of the field.

83:51Like some of the quarterbacks are too much of like a check down artist.

83:54And they're, they play within themselves too much and it condenses the field and it makes their offense struggle.

83:59Uh, James is aggression. When he throws the picks, it's a big problem, but it can actually open things up.

84:05I think he'd be positive for scataboo as they like create some run space because he, James is willing to challenge safeties and stuff.

84:11And like teams don't want to give up explosives.

84:13They're going to sit back and let James eventually make mistakes, but make him throw more passes, make him throw more to

84:19the shorter and intermediate range, make him throw more until he makes a mistake rather than let him have these big, you know, explosive plays.

84:26Probably that's where I think like there will be a lot of past volume and like potentially a lot of catch volume

84:31for neighbors and probably for likely the way that I'm describing that probably fits the likely thing a lot.

84:36So anyway, I think, I think I'm with you on that case.

84:40Actually, I was just kind of curious, but, um, yeah, no, I mean, I don't, I don't really see a lot of

84:45scenarios where you're actually playing James unless they go bench him and you're not getting some degree of that.

84:50And like I said, like it could be, it could be a problem for the giants.

84:55In some cases, it can also work in some cases.

84:57Like James has won some games. He's played decent at times because that big game hunting mentality has effects on, again, the way that defenses play you.

85:04It has, it has effects on the entire way that your offense works.

85:08And to that degree, like, I mean, how do you reign him in and why would you reign him in?

85:13It's like the only, it's like one of the positive elements.

85:16You let them roam free until you bench him.

85:18That's right. But you can't read a man. Like if you want to reign him in, just bench him because you can't read them.

85:25Like, what are you going to do? Um, it's like having a pet, like Rottweiler in a hundred square foot apartment.

85:30That's right. Let them roam or don't have them.

85:33Or don't. Yeah. All right. I want to get to, uh, as our kind of, as our secondary Porsche of the show.

85:38Wait, before we get to that, you got it thing.

85:41I wanted to circle back on the Goddard thing.

85:43The, um, I was saying something about, we don't know the severity on like Jaden Reed and some of those guys.

85:49And we talked about dart a little bit and, uh, Jaden Reed and Jane Daniels.

85:53Maybe you don't cut them until you know that more of the severity.

85:56Uh, I wanted to say Jonathan Brooks, we got the severity.

85:59I have told people that they can cut him in shallower home leagues.

86:03Like, I don't, I don't understand the point of holding him.

86:06He was already not looking like he was going to be the lead back.

86:09Chuba looks great. The offense looks great on Goddard.

86:12Um, the, the twink thing threw me off. Stowers is on return to IR.

86:15I, I, I, sorry. I, I had missed that or I'd forgotten that because I had written him up kind of favorably as a deep league stash.

86:22Um, how long is Goddard out for it? It's got, it's going to be back before Stowers.

86:27I just wanted to ask you. Probably not. Okay.

86:29I mean, it's, it's an MCL for Goddard. That's probably four to six.

86:33So Stowers will have to miss at least the first two of that.

86:36They also signed Zach Ertz. I missed that. Okay.

86:38Zach Ertz is back. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I've been, I've been missing the Eagles tight ends happenings.

86:43Okay. So yeah, yeah, yeah. That's probably not great for Stowers.

86:46I had, I had written it as Stowers as a, you know, go add Ertz, I guess, but I had written up

86:52Stowers as they're going to need some kind of playmaking in the past game.

86:55They're, you know, they're, they're relying on Goddard for that.

86:58other than Devont is playmaking. I think Zach Ertz.

87:00Somebody that can catch passes. I thought they might, you know, they might use Stowers a little bit.

87:05Cause yeah, I mean, they got Devonta Smith. Wicks is doing all right.

87:09And then I think my, my logic was like one of, or both of Makai Lemon or Stowers is going to get

87:14their timeline sped up because Goddard's out for the next four to six.

87:18I didn't realize we're missing Stowers for two more weeks.

87:20Makai Lemon's got to do more in week three, man.

87:23Yeah. He's got it. He's got it. Anyway, if the Kyle, if it is, um, the, the Tremic brightification of Eli Stowers

87:29off to a great start though, at least now he's going to be a healthy and active behind Zach Ertz.

87:34That's key. Not healthy and active. He's unhealthy for two more weeks.

87:37Well, you're saying in week five, in week five, I'm saying he's currently healthy at its roster circumvention.

87:42Oh my God. Well, they can't do anything about it right now.

87:45So the Ertz thing, wasn't it? First, it was a Goddard issue.

87:48He'll be a healthy and active for Zach Ertz.

87:51Like it's a key part of being an elite tight end.

87:54When he's inactive in week five, I'm going to make, I'm going to seize on that to, to emphasize that he had

87:59a real injury and he's just not ready to go.

88:02Like that's, that's the, that's nice. So everything's coming up.

88:05Stowers, all roads lead to Eli Stowers this season.

88:07Oh man. Dead zone. What were your thoughts? Yeah.

88:09I mean, I want to talk about some of the young backs in the dead zone.

88:14We did a full episode on these guys. I thought week two was really interesting for them.

88:18And like, who do you want to start with first?

88:21We got Basial Tootin, Trevion Henderson, Janarian Price. I thought all had like very interesting games.

88:25I want to talk about these three guys. Where do you want to start?

88:29Um, I would love your thoughts on Tootin. To me, it's Price and Hendo who I have thoughts on.

88:34So yeah. All right, let's do Tootin. Give me your thoughts on Tootin.

88:37Cause I thought he had an interesting game too.

88:39I thought he looked like the clear best back.

88:42Chris Rodriguez didn't do a lot, but like they're still using other backs.

88:45They were using Amir Abdullah, even when LeQuinn Allen had like a bad drop.

88:49Anyway, what did you see with Tootin? That was so interesting for him.

88:52Tootin looks phenomenal in this game. I mean, just like really, really good.

88:56I thought it was the best he's ever looked.

88:58I thought he looked good in week one too.

89:00I thought he looked even better in week two.

89:03And like, I view the Abdullah stuff. So Tootin got 30 of 60 snaps.

89:07I think Abdullah and Searad kind of split a lot of the rest of them.

89:10And LeQuinn was only playing on like obvious pass downs, including having that drop right near the goal line on one of them.

89:17I thought that the Abdullah stuff was like really bullish or sorry, really bearish for Searad in that like, it's clear that

89:22they just didn't really want, like they already were limiting Tootin to some degree by putting Abdullah in and they didn't want

89:28Searad to have all of the rest of it.

89:31I think it was bearish for Tootin in the very short term, but I guess I view it as bullish longer term

89:36and that they probably want the split of like speed back versus power back to be weighted far more to the speed back category.

89:43Because I mean, Abdullah has a lot more similarities with Tootin than he does with Rodriguez.

89:47And then the fact that Tootin looked so promising to me is, is kind of what my theory of Tootin was.

89:52I mean, I ended up not getting a ton of him because he moved up, but I, but like the optimistic case

89:58for Tootin that I have made this off season was he's the guy that this thing hinges on.

90:03He's the dynamic player. You know, he's probably going to start a little bit slower because he didn't play that much in year one.

90:09The year two player, they're probably not going to want to just say, okay, out of the gate, here's your 75% snap share.

90:15But if he shows himself worthy of it, like that's the guy they're going to want to scale up.

90:20And Rodriguez is more of an insurance policy of, okay, let's make sure we have an adult in the room in case

90:26Tootin proves not capable of handling it. You know, he keeps fumbling or he's missing assignments or just doesn't look as good

90:32as we thought he would look, whatever. The fact Tootin's handling every test that comes his way so far, that he looks

90:38dynamic, that he's breaking tackles, that he's scoring from one yard out, that he's, he's looking dynamic at the receiving game.

90:43Looks really, really explosive. I think he's making the right reads on most of his runs.

90:47Like to me, that's just a guy they're going to clearly scale up more and more and more.

90:52And I think you're going to see him eventually kind of subsume that Abdullah portion of the rotation and see Rod will

90:58still mix in, I think on some, some like clear, maybe occasional short yardage stuff.

91:02So then all of it, they're probably going to still want that power back element in spurts.

91:06But I feel like really positive about where the arrow is pointing on, on Basial Tootin.

91:11And like of the kind of three backs that I just laid out Tootin price and Henderson, like I had just done

91:16rest of season rankings as a post this week.

91:19Tootin would be the one that I would want right now.

91:22I think pretty decisively. And I had price ahead of him preseason.

91:25So that'd be a flip for me, even though I also have positive things to say about price when we get there.

91:31I don't know that I, yeah, I guess I, I don't know that I disagree, but I don't know that I agree

91:36about the, I certainly don't agree about the decisively vis-a-vis price who I, I had some really positive thoughts on.

91:42I had Tootin, you had price ahead of Tootin at the end there.

91:45I had price ahead of Tootin. I had price ahead of Tootin and I, and I had that choice on a couple

91:51of teams and I picked price and I still feel good about price.

91:54We'll talk about him and I, I'm not out on him by any stretch.

91:58I have, I have far more positive than negative, but like if I was on the clock again today, I would, I would take Tootin.

92:05I shuffle those guys a lot. And, and, and early on price was going later.

92:09And when, you know, I remember you asked me when we did the show, like which of all those guys I would take.

92:15And I kind of said price because of the cost thing, he ended up going a lot higher.

92:19Um, I never, well, maybe I did for a stretch, but I finished with Tootin one spot ahead of price.

92:25I just looked at my rankings, but I think, I think price has more of a path to a, like the full-time work.

92:31I think it's, I think the way you described it is interesting.

92:34I, I guess I questioned, well, maybe I don't because of the, like the way, the way I've been looking at this

92:40so far, kind of in my head is that Tootin is in the ETN role.

92:44And Rodriguez is in the Tootin role from last year, which was mostly just rushing.

92:48Tootin wasn't playing a lot of pass downs. They're using Tootin more fully across various roles.

92:52Um, but Rodriguez did get six carries. He got early game carries.

92:55He got a short yardage carry on a third and one.

92:58Um, Tootin gets the wildcat rush on first and goal from the one.

93:01I was going to ask you about that. You said he made the right reads and I know you break that stuff

93:07down in the run game a little bit more.

93:09Did you think he made the right read on that play?

93:12Cause he bounces it. Like he gives up like five, six yards of ground.

93:16I was pretty concerned on that first, on that direct snap play his touchdown.

93:20Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was fine. I mean, maybe it's easy to say it's fine.

93:24Cause he scores, but as he, as he went backward, I was like, Oh crap, he's going to get benched for this.

93:30And then he turned the corner and I'm like, Oh yeah, he's super fast.

93:33And he scored. Great. I didn't know that in front of me on the screen to say like exactly like which, which

93:39block like was, was the design path or whatever.

93:42But I mean, I, I thought it looked like a reasonable decision to try and run to the corner.

93:47And I mean, so much of what they've talked about with Tootin has been like, it's almost like Liam Cohen is kind of stressed.

93:53Like, we want you to play more free. We want you to, to, to like, to show off that home run ability.

93:59We want you to trust your instincts. Like I, I felt like he, he used his trump card trade, which is that

94:05speed to get to the corner and it was successful.

94:07So I, I didn't mind that rep at all.

94:10I mean, maybe that was bad. I, I, it was not a play that I like that stuck out to me as an error.

94:16And maybe if I look back at again or whatever, I would think that he should have kept it inside, but, um,

94:22probably, you know, I don't be maybe results based thinking by me.

94:25Like I, there definitely are some reps where I do go that granularly, but that one, I, I was like, Oh, like

94:31he, he took it outside and he got to the corner and like, good for him.

94:35Yeah. I mean, I didn't, I didn't, the only, like I'm reading what I wrote up in, in stealing signals and I was pretty quick on Tootin.

94:42I wrote that he looked like the better back and that I had that as a signal and he converted the green

94:48zone touch as part of the signal. And like, I was, I was optimistic about Tootin for sure in this game and

94:54the notes that I wrote, I don't think I, like you said, we, we all go, you know, somewhat more granularly on different stuff.

95:00I didn't go super granularly on Tootin this week.

95:02Um, I noted that Rodriguez got a short yardage carry on a third and one.

95:06And then I wrote, though it was Tootin who got the wildcard wildcat rush on first and goal from the one yard line.

95:12Now, the reason I was asking is it was first and goal.

95:15And I remembered like I made this note because they got done, like Parker Washington catches a deep post.

95:20He gets tackled at the one yard line. You give a first and goal wildcat coaches want you to run that downhill.

95:26They don't want you. He caught that. So it was a sweet play.

95:30I'm watching it now. I actually pulled it up.

95:32He caught that ball. Um, I mean, he didn't even go backward.

95:35It wasn't really a bounce. He didn't even go backward.

95:38I don't know why I said it as well.

95:40I pulled it up as well. And it's, that looks like a clear suite.

95:44I mean, I guess the, the one thing you might say negative about that is that because it's a clear suite play,

95:50that's this play that's probably installed specifically for Tootin.

95:52Like, so it's not necessarily a play that like, but you would never get Rodriguez to run that outside carry.

95:57That just would totally sense. So if you're, that's actually, that is fine.

96:01I thought he gave up ground to the way that I, did somebody else give up ground on a, on a run to the corner?

96:07I don't know. The way he did. Is that what it was this week?

96:11Yeah. Dobbins did in the same game. He had, he tried to go wide, but he didn't have the burst to get there.

96:17Well, yeah. Dobbins had the three carries in a row.

96:20He was one of four backs this week. He had three carries in a row inside the five and didn't score in

96:25any of them, but he had the two that were like pretty manual Wilson, Ashton, Gentry Dobbins.

96:30Is that, do you say there's three? That's three of them.

96:33There's four. Who was the other one? Do trivia.

96:35I know. God, I loved that. I wanted it to be, I would have to look at the teams.

96:40Can I, can I look at this one? The team scored on fourth down after.

96:44Oh, Oh God. Yeah, I know. I wrote about this last night.

96:47They, they threw to worthy. It was Kenneth Walker.

96:50Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. It was a locker.

96:52Yeah. I wrote it. I was the last game that I wrote about.

96:55I already mentioned this. Boom. Anyway, there you go.

96:58Yeah. It was the Dobbins one. The third, the third of them, which was on third down, he got like a toss.

97:04And then he, he diagnosed, I think quite correctly, the toss had no chance on the correct line.

97:08And he reversed field, went backwards, tried to turn the corner and then didn't get there.

97:13And it ended up losing like three. And so then they couldn't even go for it on fourth down.

97:18They had to kick. It was like, I thought it was a valiant effort.

97:21And I think that the toss would have lost yardage regardless, even on the primary path.

97:26So I didn't really blame him for it. Like I didn't think it was a bad decision, but I thought it showed a lack of long speed.

97:33Right. That's what I thought too. I was like, he thought he could get to the corner.

97:37And I think a faster running back could have got to the corner, but he quickly could not.

97:42The linebacker quickly took away that angle. And it was like, Ooh, but the Dobbins, or excuse me, the two one.

97:47And maybe that's what I'm confused about. The two one.

97:50And I had in my mind that he had bounced like that.

97:53They had gotten penetration from the edge and he had given ground to get around it.

97:57It's not at all how that play looked. So I just want to, I want to recant what I said.

98:03Anyway, he took it in the shotgun from the seven yard line, ran directly laterally on the seven yard line, got around the corner and scored pretty simple.

98:10Sweet play. That was the play call. Good, good play.

98:13Yeah. It was a right read. Anyway, you're optimistic about tootin.

98:16Yeah, very. And let's, let's talk about, um, let's talk about price.

98:19Cause I, you, you said you were pretty optimistic about him and I am too.

98:23Um, I want to hear your thoughts. I mean, I read, I read your stealing signals.

98:27I always read it after I write the hitchhiker's guide.

98:30Cause like, if I, if I read, if I read your stuff before I write, then it goes, one of two negative ways.

98:36It's like, either you have written what I already want to say.

98:39And then I don't want to say it anymore.

98:41Cause I'm like, I'm not saying what I just read or you say something different and it might influence me.

98:46So I always write my own stuff first, then I read yours.

98:50And this was one of the cases where I thought we wrote very similar things.

98:54Um, but yeah, I want to hear your thoughts through evaluating a price game that was like frustrating on the box score.

98:59That thing that you just said is it's such a, I mean, for people who, you know, don't make content and don't

99:05do it at the depth that we do. It's, um, it's a very, uh, relatable thing.

99:09I would just say, like, I've, I've talked about that before as well.

99:13And I've had that with some of the things that you've put out.

99:16I've definitely had it. Like, I always say this about Siegel, like once you, cause I've done stealing bananas with him for

99:22so many years when he puts out his first rankings, like I'm always kind of annoyed cause I can't look at them.

99:28I don't want to look at them until I end up doing my own rankings and I don't want to do my own rankings.

99:34So I finished projection. So sometimes it's like weeks later until I look back at like Siegel's first published rankings.

99:39And it's like, I kind of want to look at them, but I don't want to be influenced by the guys.

99:45Cause he loves to rank people just hilariously extremely.

99:47And I'm like, I don't want my initial breakdown of the rankings to be just like, you know, I'll probably be influenced

99:53by it regardless at some point, but I, you know, I don't want to anyway, the price thing you mentioned that we probably see it somewhat similarly.

100:00So, you know, you'll have to let me know what, what that was.

100:04I've not seen the hitchhiker's guide yet. So apologies on that, but he started the game.

100:08He was the starting running back on each of the first four series before Emmanuel Wilson on the fourth series, got some

100:14carries, which was like, again, all the way into the fourth series a little bit later.

100:18Later he fumbles or, um, sorry, not later. He fumbled on the third series on the, uh, on his, uh, first touch

100:24on that series and then got the first touch on the fourth series after the fumble and had, it was a toss

100:29play had about six yards before, uh, a Cardinal safety, Andrew wingered.

100:33I don't know how to say his name came down like hard downhill.

100:36Adam. It was one of those, just open field collisions is a sweep running full speed, turning it upfield from price.

100:42Safety coming downhill in the flow of the play.

100:44Boom. And price put them on his butt. Like he didn't, he didn't, uh, wrap up well and landed on his butt.

100:50And that was about six yards downfield. Price then like kept his, he didn't just fall forward, kept his footing, finished the

100:55run five more yards to get the first down on, on a first and 10 toss.

101:00It was an 11 yard run. The broadcast as they were showing the replay over and over again, gave us a way

101:06to bounce back after having that football swiped away.

101:08Like they went right back to him. They were excited to go right back to price on the first snap of the next possession.

101:14Um, and then Wilson did come in after that play with a big collision and get some carries on that fourth, uh, series.

101:20I don't know if it was the fifth series of the six series that not long after that, there was a really brief two minute series.

101:27Uh, it was really 25 seconds. We're on the clock when the Seahawks took over, took over and Holani was out there

101:33and no running back touch the ball. And then the first three series of the second half price got the, uh, started

101:39each of them, got the first touch on each of them.

101:42Their first eight series, other than that, um, so eight of their first nine, other than that 25 second, uh, uh, halftime two minute drill package.

101:48Um, generic price started and got the first running back touch.

101:51He played the first multiple downs of, of either he got to carry on first down and then came right off that

101:57one time, or he started the series and stayed on until, you know, he got to carry at some point.

102:02Wilson had seven carries at that point. Uh, eight, again, eight possessions in prices started every possession.

102:07They're not mixing up possessions. This is rare. This is rare for the same running back to start every single possession for

102:13eight or nine drives, especially when it's a rookie in a second game, like Brees Hall, after three possessions or two possessions,

102:18you'll see Braylon Allen start the third possession or the fourth possession.

102:22And he will be the back for that series.

102:24And maybe Brees will come in later in that series.

102:27But like the reason I'm emphasizing the start the possession thing is that's how coaches do it.

102:31That's how they get their breathers and stuff. They, they have, they, the backup goes out there to start the series.

102:37Like Blake Corham will do it for Kyron, whoever, like a lot of guys, unless you're Jonathan Taylor, but even Jonathan Taylor

102:42early in the second quarter, they started a series with Seth McGowan and they were like, we're going to try to get Jonathan Taylor, uh, a breather.

102:50And then what ended up happening? Like they let McGowan play one series.

102:53And then the next series, maybe it was the end of that one or very not long after Taylor had a 25 yard, super explosive rushing TD.

103:00And they're like, Hey, we're just not going to take this guy off the field.

103:04He ends up playing a 95% snap share, but like they had in the plan early in the second quarter, we want

103:10to start a series with Seth McGowan to try to get him a breather.

103:14He and Taylor still played 95% of the snaps.

103:16The Seahawks plan was every single series. Jadarian price will be the starting running back and play.

103:20We'll either do a play action to him. Cause he did that on first down a couple of times.

103:25And they ran to him on second down. Like he will play and he'll get the first touch in the series.

103:31It wasn't until the fourth series that Wilson came on during it.

103:34I think I've emphasized this point enough. The third series of the third quarter price started that one as well, ran the

103:40ball, then caught a pass and then exited the game.

103:43That's when he got his last touch at that point.

103:45Holani had one catch. Wilson had seven carries and zero targets.

103:48Uh, from that point on Holani got all four of his carries and, uh, manual Wilson got 14 carries and his one target.

103:54Um, so Wilson wins up, uh, winds up with 21 carries in this game.

103:58And for people just looking at the box score, they're like, I mean, manual Wilson outplayed Jadarian price, um, or, or got more volume than Jadarian price.

104:05It was the rest of that series that, that price started in the late third quarter.

104:09And he got the carry and then the catch at the first two plays that series.

104:13And then that's the price is last touch of the game.

104:16The rest of that series, Wilson gets four carries and they only have one more possession.

104:20I mentioned earlier in the show, it was a 10 minute, 14 second, 16 play drive.

104:25They got the ball about 11 minutes left. By the way, if you're a Cardinals, if you have Trey McBride, if you

104:30have Jeremiah love and some of this stuff, the Cardinals did not get like, they actually play aggressively in comeback mode.

104:36They did not get a play at all in the fourth quarter because of this.

104:40The Seahawks took over with about 11 minutes left, ran 10, 14 off.

104:43And then the Cardinals took back over with inside the two minute drill games decided.

104:47And they gave bam night, two carries and they went home because it was like a minute, a minute, less than a minute 20.

104:54Cause it gave him two carries and they ran 40 seconds both time.

104:57I think it was a minute left is all like less than a minute, even.

105:01Um, so like, yeah, you understand why they didn't like send Jacoby Brissette back out there and throw at that point.

105:07But if there would have been five minutes left, if they would have got a series with five minutes in the fourth

105:12quarter, you would have got passing volume. And I think you would have got love.

105:16So one of the things that happened is Algiers, um, work, uh, workload looks way more impressive than Jeremiah loves for week two.

105:22And I don't think there's, I called that noise.

105:25They only, the Cardinals to really wrap this up, ran 14 place in the second half.

105:29Like that's a tiny amount is a massively tiny amount.

105:32If you're sub 50 plays, you're very, very low for a game.

105:35So 25 and a half would be very, very low.

105:37They ran 14. I think they only ran like three or four in the entire fourth quarter.

105:42And then there was like 10 in the third quarter, regardless.

105:45I'm, you know, I'm, I'm off on a tangent of a tangent, but price, uh, went out.

105:49And that, that long fourth quarter Seahawks drive 16 plays.

105:52It featured 10 Emmanuel Wilson runs. And it also featured all four of Holani's runs.

105:56Those are 14 of the 16 plays. It featured, um, let's see, two of the green zone touches for Holani.

106:01Two of his carries were down there at the green zone.

106:04And then they brought Emmanuel Wilson back in for a green zone carry.

106:07So I look at it. A lot of people get inside the five.

106:11I look at inside the 10. That's what I called the green zone.

106:14Um, so for the game, the Seahawks wound up with nine green zone touches, five for Wilson, two for price, two for Holani on the face.

106:21That sounds bad for price. The, the specifics of it is the sequence where Emmanuel Wilson got the three in a row

106:27that you just gave that great trivia question. And Wilson was one of the guys that got that.

106:32He got those after price got a carry from the seven down to the five.

106:36And it was price's third touch in four snaps.

106:38So he gets a carry from the seven to the five, and he's gotten three carries in the last four plays.

106:44And they take them off the field and Wilson gets a carry from the five.

106:47And then I think from the two, and then one from the one, and he gets stuffed three times in a row.

106:53Um, or maybe I'm, maybe I'm slightly wrong on those yardages.

106:56I don't know, but Wilson gets the second down carry after price got the first down carry inside the 10.

107:01And then he gets the third and the fourth.

107:04He stays on. I don't think that means that Wilson's definitely the goal line back for further evidence of that later in

107:10the game, price gets a 25 yard run down into the green zone.

107:13And then they take them off. Cause he just got a 25 yard run.

107:17This happens fairly frequently where the backup comes in when the starter needs a blow after a big play.

107:22When the big, when the starter gets you down there, um, there was somebody I was just going to say, and I

107:28can't remember who, but there was a running back who had a big play down to the one and then punched in the touchdown.

107:34And I was like, that's awesome that they had the big play and they got the ball on.

107:39Hampton got one down to the one and he got the touchdown on the next play.

107:43Mario and Hampton. I was going to say, is that who it was?

107:46Okay. Yes. He had a big run and then they kept them on.

107:50And I was like, this is awesome for Hampton.

107:52Uh, but a lot of times on those big runs, they're like, yeah, just put the backup in.

107:57He'll score this touchdown, which is not fun for us for fantasy, but that's the way that they think.

108:02And that makes sense. Price got the big run.

108:04They put in Wilson. He got the first carry in the green zone.

108:08They pulled Wilson out and they put price right.

108:10Like one snap later, right back in. And so if anything, I think the first time that Wilson got the three green

108:16zone carries, they gave price a blow. The second time they were like, well, we don't want to just keep giving Wilson all these carries.

108:22We want to get price back in. Cause Wilson struggled last time.

108:25I actually saw it as kind of positive for prices, green zone work.

108:29And then the, at the end of the game, that 16 play drive, they wind up, they have Holani in there.

108:34He gets two in close. And then, and Wilson comes in and gets another, and they don't convert any of those three either.

108:40So you wind up with, I mean, you know, Wilson getting the five green zone touches and converting none and Holani getting two and converting none.

108:47And also price got to and didn't convert any.

108:50I saw somebody referenced to me the inside, the five touches cause price got none.

108:54So to emphasize, because I look at the green zone stuff and this is part of why I look at it.

108:59Cause I do like to expand it a little bit.

109:02The inside, the five touches are more valuable. There's still signal in the fact that prices, two touches were from the six and the seven.

109:08That was, they were not far. They were not from the nine.

109:12They were not from the 20. This is not like a lack of a goal line rule.

109:16And the fact that, that Wilson got a touch at like the eight down to the six after that big 25 yard run.

109:22And then price came back in for the carry at the six.

109:25And then he got down inside the five. And I can't remember what happened after that, but the fact that they brought

109:31price back in to get the carry at the six is meaningful.

109:34And there's, there's noise in the inside, the five stats here.

109:37And there's noise in the inside, the 10 stats as well, that there were nine touches and price only got two because

109:43three of them come after he's exited the game and three of them come in quick succession after he got the carry

109:49on first down, uh, after he had gotten three carries in four, you know, um, in four plays.

109:53And then, and then another one for Wilson comes on a different series where they go back to price after that.

109:59The main point I'm making is that three, three instances of getting into the green zone.

110:03The twice when price was healthy, price got a touch both times when he was healthy.

110:07Um, and Wilson got the other three that one time.

110:10And then when, when, when price was unhealthy, there was, there was out of the game.

110:14There was, there was three and those guys didn't convert them.

110:17Part of the reason there were so many touches down there was those guys weren't converting.

110:21It was only on three sequences. They get nine total touches.

110:24And then people look at it and they go, well, price only got two out of the nine touches.

110:29And then inside the 10, he got none inside the five.

110:32They got, they had nine on three, three series.

110:35One of the things I talk about is like when they're on different series, I like to see when a running back gets four green zone touches.

110:42And it was on four different series. They got down there and they used him four different times down there.

110:47And maybe because he converted the first time he got it, he scored three different times or something like, dude, this is

110:53an awesome goal line work, uh, or role. And you see a guy get multiple touches and rack up a bunch of

110:59like big numbers and expected point value in our, our fantasy expected point models, but not convert.

111:03It's actually a little bit of a concern. And that was kind of a little bit of a concern for me with Wilson.

111:09And if price is out this week, I do think Wilson's going to probably get the majority of the lead rushing.

111:15He got the majority of the lead rushing after price left.

111:18I think it was a very positive week for Wilson from the respect that, um, Holani was the main number two in week one.

111:24And Wilson was clearly the main number two in week two, but I thought it was a very positive game for price

111:30up until the point where he got hurt. He's getting all of the touches, um, to start drives, basically all the touches

111:35until he's like needs a blow on the fourth series.

111:38He's he fumbles and they go back to him with the first play on the next series.

111:43He gets a touch in both sequences in the green zone.

111:45And I think there was context to both of them where the fact that Wilson also got touches in there doesn't mean

111:51that Wilson's like the preferred goal line back, especially again to keep emphasizing because Wilson didn't score.

111:56He didn't have, you know, he didn't succeed down there.

111:58They seem to really like prices is what I came out of this game was like, they, they want him to be the clear lead.

112:05They thought he was really impressive week one, which I did as well.

112:08And the concern I guess would be, so he also had a catch in this game and he's, he looks like more

112:14of the, like the early down player, like whole on, he's going to play in past towns.

112:19Concern would be like how big the workload gets.

112:21That's why I was saying that I have a hard time with toot and being way ahead of prices.

112:26I think that the one, the one thing I wanted to circle back on toot and that I forgot to before we

112:32moved on, but it's like, how big does that actually ever get?

112:35Because I was talking about the Rodriguez thing. He's probably still going to have six carries or something.

112:40And then they use a pass down back. Like they started to use Abdul a little bit, but they were using, um,

112:46the Quinn Allen again, and LaQuinn Allen's yards per out run last year were horrible.

112:49And he gets one target in this game. He runs a little curl at the goal line.

112:54He's wide open. Lawrence has to wait like an extra half second for Allen to like, just get turned around and look at him.

113:00He's always going to go to this throw and it takes Allen forever.

113:04And then he finally gets his head turned around and Lawrence throws it right to him.

113:08And he just lets it go right through his body and fall down in between his legs.

113:12And it's like, dude, you can't drop the ball at the half yard line.

113:16It was third and goal from like the six.

113:18They could have had fourth and goal from the half yard line, potentially going for it.

113:23And said they had to kick the field goal.

113:25LaQuinn Allen has a pass down back is, is a joke.

113:28Just, just putting it out there. So that's probably positive for Tootin, but the fact that they have Amir Abdullah as well,

113:34I worry a little bit with Tootin just to compare the two that he's going to get more than like 60% of the value of the backfield price.

113:41I think it's in a similar spot where he's like, he looks like he already has sort of like 60% of the value of the backfield.

113:48And then the question is maybe he can get 80.

113:51Like, can he, can he get more? That's, that's why when you were saying Tootin clearly I had a price, I'm, I was questioning it.

113:57Although I do think Tootin looks very explosive and I think you could argue that the efficiency side of things probably more favorable for Tootin.

114:04But anyway, what, what thoughts did you have on price?

114:06And then, and then as far as the comparison of the two, I don't really have anything to add on price.

114:12I mean, you, you quite honestly hit like almost everything that I wrote and would say, so I, I don't need to duplicate it.

114:18Like, yeah, the, all, all the same points that I emphasize the sequencing of a lot of the goal line reps, the

114:24chance at the six yard line after Wilson had the failed series, the fact that he was starting every single drive except

114:30for the two minute drill, like all that stuff.

114:32The fact that he was actually leading and carries or touches 14 to seven at the time that Emmanuel Wilson kind of took over when price got hurt.

114:40I mean, that was, that was really the sentiment that I had.

114:43So I share that. I mean, ultimately I think the big, Oh, one more thing was that he doubled Wilson in routes,

114:49which also emphasized Wilson ended up playing more snaps.

114:51Cause he played through the rest of the game.

114:53He, uh, price doubled Wilson in routes, which emphasizes he was playing a lot when they were throwing the ball early in the game.

115:00But anyway, sorry. Yeah. As you were breaking all that down, I was like, that's one more, you know, positive there, but for sure.

115:06So I agree with all those points. I mean, I guess the one thing I had maybe the, the, the, the one

115:12reason I think I prefer Tootin, would be, or I guess two reasons would be, um, Tootin's already playing against all the competition.

115:18He's going to have to play against all year long.

115:20Um, I do think there's a world where like, I, I agree that price is not iced out of green zone work.

115:26I mean, he clearly isn't. He got two green zone carries.

115:29I'm still, I still feel like he's a pretty heavy underdog for we're literally at the one yard line.

115:34Like I, I would guess if price is healthy this week, there's a pass interference in the end zone that Emmanuel Wilson is trotting out on the one.

115:41You think so? After he filled five times, I do even at the one multiple times.

115:46I mean, I'm not saying that's like a hundred percent.

115:48Sure. But like, if I was projecting it, like if I was, if I was Mike Leon, no, I mean, it was my job to like project it.

115:56I wouldn't project it a hundred zero, but I would, I would project it like 65, 35 to Wilson.

116:01See, I think I'd project it 65, 35 to price.

116:03I think they would give price that look based on the ways that they were using early in these games, but no, I mean fair.

116:10I, yeah, I just, I just see that differently though.

116:13Like Wilson struggled at the goal line. Yeah. I mean, I hope that that's the case.

116:17I, I would, I would love that to be the case.

116:20Um, and I think it's totally possible that that's already the case.

116:23Like the, the way I think I wrote about it or at least podcasted about it was that to me, it's a

116:29little bit similar to the brief Braylon stuff where like, it seems like Braylon is the preferred back when there's literally one yard to go.

116:35Like he's gotten more of those, but it doesn't mean that Brice never gets them.

116:39And it certainly doesn't mean that Brice won't get carries from like the three or the four, um, or, or, and like

116:45the vast majority of them, like, because Braylon over the course I've been tracking, I don't have the numbers in front of

116:51me, but like throughout the first two weeks, he's some of them and been taken back by holds or defensive penalties or

116:57whatever, but he's had the majority of the, of the snaps when there's literally one yard to go, but Hall's had some,

117:02and he's also had the majority of like two yards to go or three yards to go.

117:07And he scored the touchdown with five yards to go.

117:09And I thought Braylon scoring the touchdown this week with five yards to go was purely just because it happened on his drive.

117:16And that would have been a, a breeze carry if he had started the drive.

117:19So I guess I would, I would view it similarly to that, um, where I think that Wilson is a larger problem

117:25at the goal line than he is on any given carry between the twenties.

117:29But I, I don't know that it is like a completely insurmountable problem.

117:32The issue is though, like price does not just have to beat out Wilson for goal line work.

117:37He then also has to beat out Zach Charbonnet at some point for goal line work and Charbonnet will get it.

117:43We know they love the goal line. And like, I, I don't have that high of, um, um, I don't have that

117:48high of hopes for how Charbonnet looks overall coming off of the, the ACL tear and how aggressive his return timeline is supposed to be.

117:55Like, I don't know that he's going to look that dynamic, but I feel like even a very diminished, um, version of

118:01Zach Charbonnet, could like, they will probably still trust for like one yard carries and pass protection.

118:05Like, like I feel like, I feel like they could basically just merge the Wilson role and the Helani role into Charbonnet

118:11and price still gets 70% of the early down work, but it does get a little trappy.

118:16And I think what I'd like to see hopefully, and what I'm still hopeful we'll see is that price has a chance

118:21to earn those high value touches before Charbonnet comes back, convert a couple of goal line carries before he comes back.

118:27So that he can earn that trust. I just want to see that versus at least with two.

118:32And I'm like, there's no one that he's competing with.

118:34That isn't already on the board. And he's currently winning the competition.

118:37Um, and so I, I like seeing that point, but I don't have them that far apart.

118:42It's a great point. It's a fair point. And I think, um, the Charbonnet thing, I wasn't really thinking through, but I think you're right.

118:49I think he's going to get the goal line work when he gets back.

118:52It then makes it so that price needs to, needs to get these carries when he's only competing with Wilson and he needs to succeed on them.

118:59And then maybe he has a shot to get some of them when Charbonnet is back still, but like that makes it thinner.

119:05Cause you might be right. Maybe Wilson gets the next one still.

119:09And then, yeah, anyway, it could be tricky, but no, no, that makes sense.

119:12Um, did you have any other thoughts on price and Tootin?

119:15I, I didn't have any thoughts on them, but I'll, I'll give some thoughts on Hendo maybe first and then pass it back over to you.

119:22Yep. So that one was another fascinating one. Um, I mean, so for anyone who, who somehow didn't watch the game, Ramondre

119:28Stevenson starts from Andre Stevenson fumbles almost immediately. And then, uh, Trevion Henderson on, I think his first drive might've been a second drive.

119:34I think it was his first drive. Um, he ends up capping it off with a 39 yard rushing touchdown.

119:39Um, and then I think his, the rest of his carries went for like 15 carries for 37 yards.

119:44And so, you know, in the meantime, I'm watching the game.

119:47I'm, I'm on the ship cast and I'm like, sweet.

119:50Like this, this is, this is happening earlier than I could have possibly expected.

119:54Like Ramondre insta fumbles Henderson. I think Henderson started literally every drive for the rest of the game.

119:58Stevenson got one touch between his fumble and like the midway point of the third quarter.

120:03And it came on a full back dive where Henderson was the tailback.

120:06And also on the field. And they, they lined Stevenson up at fullback.

120:09It was a short yardage carry. He converted that.

120:12He played a few other snaps kind of mixed in.

120:14I don't think he got any other touches. He certainly didn't lead any other drives until like the very end of the game.

120:20They loaded him up with some runs and inter interchanging with Trevion Henderson.

120:24Stevenson actually looked really good on some of those, but for the entire middle of the game, Henderson was an out and out workhorse.

120:30Um, and I think it just like is a really uncertain situation.

120:33To be honest, like I watched all the Henderson carries.

120:36I tried to watch it really carefully. I felt like there was kind of one example.

120:40Ironically, his very first carry of the game, which is also his first carry of the season.

120:45I thought it was like a awful read, um, where it was a duo run.

120:49And I thought it was pretty clear that there's common color to the left side and the Steelers guys have leverage to the right side.

120:55And he just right into the right side. It was like a six yard game.

120:59Like, I think that could have been a touchdown actually on the very first carry he got if he just stayed on

121:05the right side, or at least it would have been like a 20 yard gain.

121:09Um, but I thought that was a brutal rap.

121:11And then for the rest of the game, I didn't see any like glaring mistakes.

121:15I just, I guess my overall vibe with him is I don't think he paces his runs very well to the point

121:21where I, I struggled to articulate what he was doing wrong, but it felt like a lot of them were just kind of like into the defender.

121:28And then when Ramondre came back in and he got a couple of carries where I'm just like, this is like, I

121:34guess just a more mature rushing style to me where he's like pacing his runs a little better, better.

121:39It's playing with a little bit more rhythm. He's allowing the blocks to open up in front of him on some of

121:45these, because he's not just sprinting as hard as he possibly can into the line sometimes.

121:49And so I guess like my overall summation, watching the game and it's just one game is that these backs are kind

121:55of still who I think they are, which is that Stevenson is like a pretty refined, like technical runner with very massive

122:01limitations in terms of his like speed. And also has a major fumbling problem.

122:04Henderson is a incredibly explosive and dynamic talent who I think leaves yards on the table, you know, at a decent clip on other reps.

122:11And I guess it's like the question that to me would face a coaching staff is like, what's, what's worth more to you?

122:17Because I do think on a majority of the carries, Stevenson is probably going to get an extra yard or two, but

122:23if Stevenson had the carry that Henderson took to the house, like it would be a 15 yard game, you know, like

122:29it was a well, perfectly blocked play, but Stevenson is never making that a house call.

122:33And I think a lot of people like to say, Oh, you know, Henderson only has these big runs because they're perfectly blocked.

122:39It's like, yeah, a lot of running backs get perfectly blocked runs and those become 12 yard runs or 17 yard runs,

122:45maybe even 20 yard runs, but they're not, they're not 40 yard touchdowns.

122:48And you, you can't call the 40 yard touchdown play for Henderson.

122:51If you want the 40 yard touchdowns, you probably have to give them 15 to 20 carries because that's the only way

122:57you're going to be able to consistently get it.

122:59So it's like, are you willing to live with some of the deficiencies for the, for the outside?

123:04And my answer would always be yes. If I was NFL coach, I'm not certainly not the coach of the Patriots.

123:10I think that Ramond Ray undercuts his reliability argument substantially when he fumbles as often as he does.

123:14Because now it's like, not only is, you know, one out of every 10 plays is Henderson creating a touchdown where Stevenson created a chunk.

123:21One of every 10 plays, Ramond Ray was putting the ball on the ground when Henderson would not.

123:26So all that's to say is that I just, I don't really know what the coaching staff will do with what I

123:31perceive to be a dilemma, but my guess would be, we see rare, we see roughly even touches next week, probably Ramond

123:37Ray leads and snaps, which is a better outcome for week three than I would have projected for week one.

123:43I think Hendo needs to like show a little bit more growth as a runner for him to just take over as the complete workhorse.

123:49But I also wouldn't be that shocked if the, if the Patriots got to a point out of this week or later

123:55where they just said, we're sick of this fumbling stuff.

123:58We're really enthused by the, by the big play upside.

124:00Our offense looks a lot worse this year than it did last year.

124:04I passed the game. Anyway, it looks less explosive.

124:06We need to find some way to get explosives.

124:08Henderson's the one that's capable of creating them. So maybe they're more willing to live with the punches this year and, and emphasize Henderson more.

124:15I think it's arrow up on Henderson for sure.

124:17I guess I'd be really stunned if this week was just like the second and third quarters and it was Henderson seeing 80% of the work.

124:24I think it'll be a roughly even split, but I'm curious what you saw from Henderson.

124:28And then I'm curious like what you project the split to be kind of this week and beyond.

124:33And you're on mute. I agree with all that.

124:36I think, uh, the, I, I have the same read about what's going to happen going forward.

124:40Um, I thought it was, I guess a couple of things that I would, some color that I would add to basically agreeing with everything that you said.

124:47I thought it was surprising that Ramondre Stevenson fumbled on a second touch with 11 minutes and 30 seconds in the first quarter.

124:53And as you laid out, he got one carry out of a fullback alignment on a third and one up until six 40 of the third quarter.

125:01You've got a target just before that at seven 24, but you got to touch at six 40.

125:05That's a long time for him to get benched for that.

125:08When Henderson has all of his own flaws and had just come back.

125:12Um, another little bit of color I would add is the particular game flow, right?

125:16Like, so you said, if you were the coach, you would play Henderson in those spots.

125:20I think there's an element of this particular game.

125:22The Roger, uh, Rogers and the Steelers were not really threatening.

125:25They got the explosive run. You get the win.

125:27You get the early lead. You're up seven zero and you hunt for that more.

125:31You're up 10 zero, you know, in the second quarter, you get, you know, um, a field goal right at, uh, at the beginning of the second quarter.

125:39So now you're up 10 up until halftime third quarter.

125:41You give Stevenson a little bit more work and then you get some key turnovers.

125:45Late Rogers has a strip sack fumble recovered for a touchdown.

125:48Um, gets another, uh, throws a, throws an interception on a long drive with five minutes remaining.

125:53It's 20 to three. At this point, game's probably done.

125:55It wasn't his fault at all. It's a quick screen to, to Jeremy Bernard, who had had a decent little game.

126:01He had four straight catches at somebody. We talked about a little bit in the off season and I was excited to

126:07see how he looked for somebody that, you know, you had, you told me you were a little bit in on.

126:12We talked a little bit about obviously Pittman being out, he gets a little bit of extra run one series.

126:17He caught all four of his passes, like back to back to back to back.

126:21He's looked like a big part of the offense, four catches in one series.

126:25Didn't catch any of the rest of his targets, rest of the game, which is unfortunate.

126:29And this one was particularly unfortunate because it was a quick screen.

126:32Are you just watching it now? No, no. I just know what you're going to say.

126:37Like I, I've seen the play. I just know what you're going to reference.

126:40sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I, yeah, sorry.

126:43I just referenced it a second ago. So I thought you had looked it up or something, but no, yeah, they threw

126:49a quick screen to him and he bobbled it up into the air for a pick.

126:53He basically, you know, volleyball set it into the air for an easy interception.

126:57So though I wrote in signals that the Patriots won this game because of the Ramon, uh, excuse me, the Travion explosive

127:03and a couple of, of big late turnovers. They won 20 to three.

127:06One of those was a defensive penalty. There was two touch, a defensive penalty, a defensive touchdown.

127:10There were two touchdowns, a defensive touchdown and a Travion Henderson touchdown.

127:14And not a lot else happened, happened in this game.

127:16Like it just wasn't that exciting of a football game.

127:19Um, Jake made through for 208 yards. You know, there's different, uh, like Dobbs ends up catching a 63 yard pass, which

127:25was like one of the other really big plays.

127:27And so that's part of why the Patriots end up with 327 total yards, which is fine.

127:31But part of that's because you've got a 63 yard completion and you've got a 39 yard touchdown run.

127:37And then not a lot else. The Steelers had 237 yards of offense.

127:40Uh, Stevenson, when he finally did get that touch in the third quarter, 24 yard run on the first play, then a

127:46nine yard run, he winds up with a really efficient rushing day.

127:49And to your point, you know, you were talking about as like a maturity to his, his, uh, rushing style.

127:54And I, I liked that, that call, but the element of, Hey, you got sent to the dog house for two plus quarters.

128:00And Henderson has this explosive run. And so we're just going to keep letting Henderson go and go and go for two

128:06plus quarters, but Henderson does nothing else. I did the same thing you did was talk about in, which was talk about

128:12in the splits of how in his other 15 carries, he didn't have very many yards.

128:16The reason we both gravitated toward that, I'm sure is that we look at the box score and we see 39 yard touchdown.

128:22He only had 76 yards and he got 16 carries.

128:25You do the math really quick. You go, there's a lot of carries here for him to not have a hundred yard

128:31day when he had a 40 yard run. Like where's, where's the, where are the other yards at?

128:35Like, this is not ideal. And that's what it looked like when you watched the game as well.

128:40I'm sure we both felt that way too. We were watching it.

128:43We're like, Hey, it's great how much work he's getting, but when's he going to hit for another 10, 12 yard run?

128:49Like it's, there's a couple of five, six yarders in here, but like, what are we doing?

128:53We're getting stuffed every single time. And you break down the actual rushing like decisions and all that stuff more.

128:59And to your point, like a lot of it was him running into the line and going nowhere.

129:03You know, I'm, I, I don't do as much of the running back film study as you do.

129:08And I know you look like some of the end zone stuff, like you get a better look at it from the end zone stuff.

129:15I famously hate the end zone view when it comes to running back stuff, especially if you're watching Keaton Mitchell, I only liked the sideline view.

129:22Um, but the, uh, anyway, the, I agreed with everything you were saying.

129:25I just was going to say that like, if this game had gone differently, if they needed to pass, like they didn't

129:31feel like they needed to pass, they were running the ball.

129:34Okay. We'll just big game hunt with, with Travion Henderson on the run, on the run stuff.

129:38Um, but up until like, he's a little bit like the J I called, I was using the big game hunt stuff with Jameis.

129:45He's a little bit like the Jameis of running backs.

129:47Like you're going to, you're either going to get a horrible rep or you're going to get a tough, like a big play.

129:53It's like, we're going to just big game hunt for big plays or else you're going to get a horrible rep.

129:59Um, Ooh, my wife brought me a coffee. I want to, Oh, nice.

130:02Yes. Look at that. That's why, that's why I married you.

130:05Put a ring on it. Um, she knows that I do these long pods and I've been, um, doing the, the afternoon,

130:11uh, the afternoon coffee these days that has been a pick me up.

130:14So she foresaw the, the issue there. Great, uh, great anticipation from, uh, Mrs.

130:18Gretch. The, um, the, um, Travion Henderson point was that he was, yeah, I was making the point about he's big game hunting like, uh, James Winston.

130:25But if you were in a situation where you needed pass blocking, if you, and then the other, the other thing I

130:31think is interesting is you go back to the postseason last year.

130:34So the one thing I'll, I'll just interrupt you on.

130:37And then I want to hear what you're talking about the postseason.

130:40It's just like, I think that's, that's a lot of like from, from a team level.

130:44And maybe this is the way that you meant it.

130:47Um, and maybe I'm just making a different point from like the team level.

130:50If you keep giving the ball to Travion Henderson, you are big game hunting.

130:54I guess like him as a runner, I actually don't feel like his big game hunting, like in the same way, like Ken Walker or Deandre Swift.

131:01I feel like the rep on them. He's like, Oh, they bounce everything to the outside.

131:05They bounce everything to the outside. Always big game hunting.

131:08They're not taking what the defense gives them. I think they've both gotten a little bit better at that over the years.

131:14Walker, especially like Henderson's issue is almost the opposite.

131:16Like Henderson, like I, I wish Henderson would show more creativity.

131:19I feel like he just kind of like runs a hundred miles an hour into the designed hole.

131:24And then it's like, sometimes the holes there and he gets an ADR touchdown and sometimes the defenders there and he runs right into him.

131:30And sometimes an old lineman's ass is there and he runs right into that.

131:34Like, I just like, I'm like, I wish he would actually show more innovation on his, whereas I feel like he's just

131:40kind of like, like one track mind. Anyway, that's the delineation.

131:43No, no. Yeah. A great point. And I, I like that delineation.

131:46It's exactly right. It's totally different than, than Walker and Swift.

131:49And no, it was, it was a, it was a separate point that I was going to make.

131:54I'm talking about the split and how the split here, as you were saying was better for Henderson than we would expect going forward.

132:00And the way that I was going to describe that is like the, the exact, like expectation for the split is going to evolve over time too.

132:07My expectation for the split going forward is going to be a little bit more favorable to Henderson than what we might've

132:13thought coming into the year or what it was at the end of last year, certainly.

132:17And it's a little bit more probably it's not quite, but it's a little bit more like the mid season of last year.

132:23If you heard any of my talking on this in the off season, I talked about a lot of different places that

132:29I thought people were oversimplifying this backfield as if what happened at the end of the year was what happened all of last year.

132:35And it's very much not what happened all of last year.

132:38There was a long stretch in the middle of the season when Stevenson was still struggling quite a bit, but Henderson, they

132:44couldn't play him in certain stuff, but Stevenson would play more snaps, but Henderson would get more touches.

132:49And it was just very clear that they thought Henderson was the back.

132:52They wanted to get the ball to, to chase these big plays.

132:55He ends up having a couple long touchdown or he had four carries of 50 plus yards, only running back in the league to do that.

133:02I also saw that recently. He was the first rookie to do that since I can't remember who, but it was, there's

133:08only two other rookies that had ever done that in NFL history, four 50 plus yard touchdowns, I think was the stat for that one.

133:15The set I always gave was four 50 yard carries or whatever, but he was like, he had the most explosive runs, long explosive runs last year.

133:22If 50 yards is your, is your marker. And, and that was a lot of those, there was a game where he had two in the same game.

133:29And a lot of that was in that stretch from like week eight to week 13.

133:33Like Stevenson missed some of that, but even before Stevenson missed, he was playing more snaps, but Henderson was getting more touches in some games.

133:40And then after Stevenson came back, like Henderson gets a concussion fairly quickly.

133:43And then what I was going to say about the post season is Stevenson ends up getting a yardage efficiency at the end of the last year.

133:50And that leads to a slight shift because it's like, well, Stevenson's the guy that we want to keep on the field

133:56anyway, because he can pass block and he's being more efficient and he's starting to hit for some plays.

134:01Then we'll play him. And they did that going into the post season, but they were still using Henderson.

134:06The thing in the post season that happened was in the AFC championship game, Henderson only played four snaps and everyone jumped all over that.

134:13I remember this being a big social media conversation that was like Henderson, look at how bad Henderson is.

134:18And he's so buried in all of these things.

134:20They had, they played him for 25 plus snaps, both of the first two playoff games.

134:24And they played him for 25 plus snaps in the Superbowl two weeks later, as they got beat, because they were looking for big plays.

134:31They still saw him as a meaningful player. It was one game that they went down to four snaps and they did

134:37it because they were playing Jarrett Stidham in a like weather game, very defensive struggle type situation.

134:41And I guess like, and they were like just trying to like, but that, that I always say first rule, do no

134:47harm as far as the like running back stuff goes.

134:50It's like, it just was like, we want to just like stick to what we're doing and, and, and run the offense.

134:55And there wasn't even a lot of play volume.

134:58So it wasn't like, they really need to spell Stevenson.

135:00And it was like, we're just going to win a defensive struggle here and, and play our, our, our first rule, do

135:06no harm running back the whole game. And that's the way that they did it in that game flow.

135:11And then that's my, my point on that was like contrasting that to week two, where Henderson got a lot more work

135:17because of this game flow, which was the sequencing early of the fumble of Stevenson and Henderson hitting for a big play.

135:23And it's very notable that Henderson hit for the big play early.

135:26And that's why he got so many more carries.

135:28It wasn't that he got 15 low carries and then hit for a big play late.

135:33That would have been way more optimistic that they kept going to him.

135:36And he finally hit it. He hit it early and they're like, we got to keep going back to him.

135:41And then they're like, I guess it's the late third quarter and he's not doing anything.

135:45We got to go back to Stevenson. And then Stevenson hits on a couple 24 yard run, nine yard run in his

135:51first two carries after, you know, two quarters off.

135:54And you're like, well, we're right back to a 50, 50 committee.

135:57Like, Henderson maybe had a chance there to like run away with things, but it did not happen.

136:02I think we're at a 50, 50 committee next week.

136:04I would, I would handicap it as Stevenson will play more snaps.

136:07I think there's a chance that it's similar to, to that area of the, of the season last year where Stevenson plays

136:13more snaps, but Henderson gets more touches. I don't think that's likely.

136:16I think probably Stevenson gets more touches as well, but I would say the touches are kind of 50, 50 to me.

136:22That's where I'm at. Like, I think Stevenson plays more snaps.

136:25I think, I think it's probably 60, 40 Stevenson on the snaps as a default or 65, 35, maybe even, but like

136:31something in there could be higher, could be lower, but probably 60, 40 is my, my median.

136:35And then I think the median for the touches I'll straight up say is, I think it's 50, 50.

136:40Like I think it's like right down the middle.

136:43Like that's the way I'm handicapped. I mean, that's exactly, this is like the last, the last very last two sentences of

136:48my blurb on them this week, where I think both are highly volatile plays next week in a matchup with Jaguars, elite run defense.

136:55I'd prefer to sit either. If you can and make a decision in week four with more information.

137:00If I had to guess, it'll be an even split in touches with Stevenson leading in snaps.

137:04So I'm, I'm very, very, that's fascinating. That's exactly the way I wrote it too.

137:08Yeah. Um, I can't remember exactly the way I worded it, but it was, yeah, that's why I said it that way.

137:14It's like, I said it like I read what you wrote it.

137:17Then you know, like you were sharing earlier, like I said it like I read what you wrote and then I repeated

137:23it, but I wrote it that way too. For the record, um, you have in the show sheet, do you have anything else on Henderson?

137:29I'm good on Henderson. Yeah. Is there anything, anybody else you wanted to talk?

137:33I put some guys in the show sheet if you want to get to them too quick.

137:37I mean, I don't, yeah, I don't care to, uh, you, you wrote his Judkins just bad or is it not his fault?

137:44I mean, I don't have an answer on that.

137:46I don't know. That's why, that's why I put it in the show sheet is I don't have an answer on that.

137:52Like I find myself uninspired. I would say like, like, I don't know.

137:55Like he like never looks bad to me. but like if it's, it's, it's been like nearly a full season of games

138:01since he had four yards per carry. I think it's been since like week six last year.

138:05Like that's not that high of a bar. I know he's playing in, in like a hell of situation, but like at

138:11some point you would like to see, you'd like to look at the box score and not read 14 carries for 31 yards or, or whatever else.

138:18Um, and I just, I know it's been two terrible matchups for him against Jacksonville and against Tampa Bay.

138:23But I would just love to see some dynamism.

138:26I thought he looked dynamic like in the first month of last season to a point that I was kind of throwing out.

138:32Like I didn't have that high of a, of a grade on him as a prospect.

138:36And like within a month, I thought he was playing so well that I was like, I was wrong.

138:41Like this guy's really good. And then it's just the, the plays have kind of just dried up.

138:46And I don't know if it's just purely the Browns are terrible.

138:49I'm, I'm hopeful that coming off of a week where clearly Tampa Bay prioritize stopping the run.

138:53And like Watson, despite being awful was actually able to make plays down the field on occasion.

138:58And like, they, they hit, um, on the big one to Boston and like kind of an uncovered, the game winning touchdown

139:04to White Hart, where they clearly just weren't allocating enough resources in the back end.

139:08Like maybe defenses see that and decide like, okay, we need to at least like, kind of try to defend the pass here.

139:14I'm hopeful that that opens things up for him, but it's a tough start.

139:17Like I would feel terrible starting quinshot jug kids this week.

139:20Yeah, me too. So I guess my answer would be, I think it's more like not his fault.

139:25And I think the offense is, is bad. They go and win that game.

139:29And you know, we, we had the bucks and everything.

139:31The tilting thing there is they wound up with like a hundred air yards.

139:35Their offense was not good. They didn't get anything really going.

139:38They get an, uh, an incredible individual effort from Denzel Boston, catching a pass over the middle.

139:42That's like the one decent Deshaun Watson throw of the day.

139:45And it's like through three defenders. They also try to throw a 50, 50 ball to Boston in the end zone.

139:51So like everyone's really in on Boston. I'm actually like, I called it noise that he had the two long touchdowns because

139:57I don't think that there's been a lot of evidence that like, they're going to be like, it's hard enough to get

140:02the explosives vertically on any offense around the league right now.

140:05I don't think there's a lot of, I wrote them as a, as a, like as a, this guy is clearly good

140:11and you should be pumped if you haven't been in dynasty and like maybe even buy him in dynasty.

140:16But I, I also, I basically said like, if, if this, if the first two weeks have convinced you to buy in

140:22dynasty, probably just wait a couple of weeks. Cause he's going to have a couple of bad games, right?

140:27You can still be really sure he's good. And then buy in dynasty, but that's right.

140:31Yeah. Don't buy now. Exactly. Right. He's going to have some clunkers cause he's going to have to, they can't throw that

140:37a hundred area arts again, to reiterate that like 60 of them went to Boston.

140:41He's their vertical threat. It's great. Judy's getting nothing.

140:43I thought Judy would get a few more targets than he is.

140:46And Casey Concepcion is just all like around the line of scrimmage, which is fine.

140:50But we want to see some air yards for him, for him to be playable.

140:54Fannin's week two was much better than fans week one.

140:57I was optimistic about Fannin. That was one of the big signals.

141:00His routes went back up. They were talking about him on the broadcast in a way that like, sometimes I talk about

141:06it in signal sometimes, but sometimes it's like they do the production meetings with the coaches and then the broadcast group like

141:12gets to know what to talk about. And they spotlighted him as like a key matchup, him and a linebacker that's going to be on him.

141:18And it was like, he didn't say what the broadcast sometimes says, which is, you know, Todd Monken said to us in

141:24the production meeting this, he did not say that, but he said, I expect Fannin to be playing a lot more and

141:30get more, you know, catch more passes. And it was early in the game.

141:34And I was like, that's interesting. I put it in my notes.

141:37I'm like for him to say, I expect that.

141:39So definitively is like, he heard that from the team.

141:42Cause why would you like otherwise like be so confident in that specific prediction?

141:46And then Fannin's routes were up. And, and so I was like, yeah, I mean, that probably is where they got it

141:51was straight up from Monken and the production meeting.

141:54And they just presented it a little bit differently.

141:56But anyway, I was optimistic about Fannin, but yeah, Watson, Watson didn't like play great in this game or anything, or like do, do a whole lot.

142:03He, he threw that pass also over the middle of the Boston into triple coverage basically.

142:07And like threaded it beautifully, but there's an element with passes.

142:10Like one of the things I've written about as well in the newsletter before is like, when you throw the ball, there's

142:16a spatial awareness thing of like players moving and stuff.

142:19I always think it's funny when, when we give like a ton of credit to like a pass, barely going like outside

142:25the out, outstretched tip of a finger of a defender.

142:27It's, and like, sometimes it's like they had room to miss that finger by like a foot or two feet.

142:33And it's like, it actually was too close because they threw that like way back here.

142:37It had to fly all the way down there and you missed by an inch.

142:41You're not that perfect at like, nobody is nobody like, like no quarterback, even in practice can hit a mark that good down the field.

142:47Like remember the old, like QB QB challenge when I was at the FF expo at the house, they had that on.

142:53Um, and it was like the, the funnest thing to watch the old QB, uh, whatever they call it, the QB challenge.

142:59And we were watching like Peyton Manning and like Aaron Brooks and all these guys like around like 2000, like turn of the century era, Jake Plummer.

143:06And like, and they're throwing at those moving targets and stuff.

143:09And like, yeah, I mean, quarterbacks are super accurate.

143:11Sometimes they're nailing them, but like you, you can't hit targets exactly where you want to hit them with every throw that far down the field.

143:18It's just not the way it works. Even in, in like not in pads and like in warmups and throwing in, in a, in a pro bowl.

143:25Like it's, it's not possible let alone with shoulder pads on while you're getting hit and all this stuff in the, in a NFL game.

143:32Anyway, my point is like, we sometimes like, it's a weird point, but like, I don't know.

143:36Like I played a lot of flag football back in the day.

143:39I played a lot of quarterback. You throw to a spot and you, you, you judge stuff that's moving.

143:44And then you hope that the ball drops in into a spot when, when those things get to where they're going.

143:50Right? Like, and anyway, NFL quarterbacks are a lot better than I am at flag football, but like, I, I, I just

143:56saying like, I've, I've, I've done this and I've thrown and thought that I thought things were going to like progress in

144:02the next couple seconds after my throw, all the balls in the air.

144:05And, and a lot of times they do. And a lot of times they don't, but like when a throw barely hits

144:11a wind, like sometimes there's a tight window and it has to hit that window.

144:15And you're like, yeah, that's a great tight window throw.

144:17And that's what Watson's was. My point on this whole point is that Watson threw in a triple coverage and he's done this many other times.

144:24And he's missed his, his spots by like feet, not inches.

144:27He's missed by feet. And so when this one is a perfect tight window throw, I'm not inclined to give him credit.

144:33It's a, it's very similar to the Anthony Richardson thing back in the day, like Anthony Richardson would hit some throws and they'd look so beautiful.

144:40People be like, that is a dime. He threw that 70 yards right on the money.

144:44And I'm like, that doesn't mean that he's accurate.

144:46It means that on that throw, when he launched it, like it's, I feel like it's a, it's a bell curve and

144:52he hit the middle of the bell curve. Right.

144:55But like his bell curve is wider. He can miss by like, he can, like it's, you know what I, you know what I'm saying?

145:01Like it's really good quarterbacks have a narrower bell curve where most of the stuff hits like really close to where they're aiming.

145:07And the other guys miss by a lot. You're still more likely to wind up in the middle of the bell curve on any given throw.

145:14But the, the peak of the bell curve for a guy like Richardson or like what Deshaun Watson is right now, it

145:20might only be like 20% of the throws. Right.

145:22And then it's really flat. And the other 80% is stretching either one way, this way, or that way.

145:27The miss is long. It's short. It's left, right, whatever.

145:30That's what I always felt like with Richardson when it was when he was missing, he was missing by a lot.

145:35And it's then when he throws a really accurate throw, I'm not inclined to give him a ton of credit for that

145:41because I'm like, he's just throwing it out there.

145:44And sometimes you're going to hit your spot. That's what that throw felt like to me from Watson is my point.

145:49Boston catches in traffic and then Boston sheds off a hit spins out, runs a DB because he's got speed.

145:54Like the whole thing from Boston, incredible, the contact balance, the acceleration to get back up to speed and outrun the guy.

146:00Looked awesome. Looked absolutely incredible. Just like he did at, at you dub translating to the next level.

146:05You love to see that. Um, but it was not a, a throw that I'm like, Oh, he's going to be able

146:11to repeat that a bunch of times. I don't think Boston's ability to break the tackle is going to be even like

146:16particularly repeatable in those instances earlier in the game.

146:19They tried to go to Boston in the end zone on a 50, 50 ball and didn't even give him a shot.

146:25He, he threw the pass out of bounds at the side of the end zone.

146:29Um, he had the long touchdown the week, prior, and it was another really good throw.

146:33Those are basically Watson's only two good down, down, like meaningfully downfield throws in two weeks.

146:37And that's, I guess that's the whole point is if the, if Watson's thrown two good passes and you've gotten too long

146:43touchdowns out of it, it's a, an unsustainable degree of efficiency, right?

146:46Like you're probably not going to continue to get that type of production.

146:49So anyway, that was why I called the Boston stuff sort of noise.

146:53I'm way off on a different tangent, but, um, the Browns offense wasn't better because they won last week.

146:58It's still an offense to target in, um, with opposing DSTs.

147:01They had basically no offensive production until late, until they started to like stack some drives and get going a little bit.

147:07They're down 16 to six and like deserve to be down 16 to six.

147:10Um, I can't remember the exact specifics, but the, I blame the bucks a little bit for like, yeah, the block, keeping them like, they, they turtled, right.

147:18They, they were not efficient enough on their drives early.

147:20One of the big themes I was talking about this week was like, it's a game of possessions and like per possession efficiency.

147:26And they, the bucks did not take care of business on their earlier drives for a variety of reasons.

147:31Um, they settled for field goals in their first two drives Mayfield through a pick that was returned into field goal range.

147:37And that's how the bucks got their, their second field goal that tied at six, six, and then eventually the bucks were

147:43able to get it to 16 to six, but they had a, another meaningful drive where they had an offensive penalty, uh,

147:49negate a third down conversion and it were a return, uh, it caused an issue.

147:53But yeah, the turtle thing that you're talking about, I wrote about was immediately after the, 16 to six touchdown, the Boston

147:58touchdown, they went run, run past punt, like just the worst.

148:01They ran it, got one yard, then ran it again on second and nine, third and eight incomplete, third and eight punt.

148:07And it's like, I'm not a big momentum guy, but like the Browns just had their best play of the season.

148:13And they got to 16 to six and they think they can win this game.

148:17You better go after it on this next drive.

148:19Like you don't just punt it back to them.

148:21And the Browns to the point that everyone makes about momentum.

148:24The Browns didn't score on that drive. They ended up punting it back, but you're late enough that now like the, the Bucks gave up a possession there.

148:32And then they had one more possession and they went down and they kicked a field goal.

148:36And then the Browns scored a touchdown coming back.

148:38And now you're down. Cause it was 16, six.

148:41Now you're down 23 to 19. And, and then the Bucks get one more possession after that to try to win the game at the end.

148:48But you're down for like, how did the Bucks wind up down four?

148:51It's because they didn't maximize their possessions. You only get like 10 a game.

148:55Like there was multiple possessions to your point about the turtling that they gave up along the way, which helped the Browns

149:01kind of get into the flow of things. Anyway, this is a super long tangent about the Browns offense, not being good.

149:06That is not even like you were at, we're talking about Judkins, but I think the issue is the Browns offense.

149:12The Browns offense sucks. That's, that sounds like a decent enough note to end it on.

149:16Do you have any other thoughts or are we, are we good here at a nice brisk two and a half hours today?

149:22Yeah, no, I think we should, we should let the listeners out.

149:25We are going to try to do it a little shorter.

149:28And, and we did do it a little before we went to Judkins.

149:32I thought you were thinking about ending it. And then I decided to talk about the Browns for a half an hour.

149:37All right, go and subscribe to stealing signals. Go and subscribe to thinking about thinking, go and subscribe to the long view.

149:43Patreon. Anything else you want to plug specifically? Nope.

149:46We'll see you guys next week. Later. All right.

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