Chiefs dominate Broncos behind big night from Kenneth Walker

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1:35Robert Mays: Welcome to the Athletic Football Show, brought to you by the U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Card. I'm Robert Mays. Week one, all of week one, is in the books after a dominant Kansas City Chiefs win over the Denver Broncos. We dove in to all of it. The Kenneth Walker of it all. Chiefs leaning into the ground game. Spags back in a big way. Really fun game from the Chiefs defense. A lot of their new pieces. A vision of the Chiefs that, if you were excited about this team, a lot of it came to fruition. Not all perfect. We'll talk about the passing game lagging behind a little bit, but not lagging nearly as much as the Denver Broncos in this game, who laid an egg in a big way.

2:15Robert Mays: Potentially the most disappointing performance of week one. We dug into all of it with me, Dave, and Derek. Let's get to that conversation right now.

2:29Robert Mays: Got a lot to dig into as it relates to that game. I don't even know where to start. I think we have to start with the new look and new feel Kansas City Chiefs. And it was apparent immediately. Them coming out on the first drive and having a fourth and one, and they did it multiple times. not only was Kyrus Tonga in the backfield, they also had a sixth offensive lineman in the game. I don't even know what you would call that a personnel grouping. The biggest one I could possibly imagine. And the fact that that's what they were doing on the first drive really set the tone for what we should come to expect

3:03Dave Helman: from the Kansas City Chiefs in this game. Four straight Kenneth Walker runs to open their season, one of them being on first down. I think Mahomes threw twice on the entire drive, something like that. And it was the ultimate FU, this is what we're going to do start to the season. And we're a little more familiar with it on the other side of the ball, but starting with a double cornerback blitz on the first play of the game to sack Bo Nix and then Mansoor Delane basically running Cortland Sutton's route for him at the start of this thing. It was suffocating on defense. The statement was very clearly made on offense.

3:41Dave Helman: It was really impressive. is, and we can talk about the Kenneth Walker game as a whole, that is, and it's only week one, that is the most immediate and best return on investment that like anybody made this offseason. For them to like immediate, they ran for 220 yards. It's the third most in the Andy Reid era with the Kansas City Chiefs. They were immediately the football team they wanted to be.

4:02Robert Mays: 12.6 total rushing EPA on the day for the Broncos, which is the single most in a game during the next-gen era, which goes back to 2015. They averaged 0.33 EPA per rush. Holy shit. Which is, just for context, that's better than like Lamar Jackson in 24 throwing the ball. It was like 0.27. Yeah, this is like MVP. That's the value we were getting. It's MVP level plus drop back efficiency in what they did on the ground tonight.

4:31Dave Helman: So this, if I'm hearing you correctly, what the Chiefs did to Denver tonight is worse than what Miami did to Denver in 2023? No, no, no. This is just for the Chiefs.

4:39Robert Mays: The Chiefs running games going back to 2015. And I looked up totally PA because it's not, eat paper carry they've had better games just because they don't run the ball that often. If you have a game where you carry the ball 15 times, you get 14 first downs because every run is on second and two. We got plenty of those Chiefs games. But the volume combined with the efficiency truly stands alone in anything we have seen from the Kansas City Chiefs offense in the past decade.

5:04Dave Helman: I mean, Kenneth Walker matched the Chiefs' explosive play production. Not exactly. but like he flirted with matching what they did last year for running backs.

5:13Robert Mays: He had more 20-yard runs tonight than the Chiefs had last season.

5:17Dave Helman: More 20-yard runs and Chiefs running backs only had like 10 designed runs of 12-plus yards all last year. I don't know what he finished with, but pretty damn close to their season tally from the entire year. And it was in the way that like you were told that Kenneth Walker would get them. There are some explosive run games like the Bears, for example. It's not necessarily the running back making the offense right. It's like this was blocked to perfection. Guys are making blocks downfield as a wide receiver. For a lot of the Kenneth Walker ones, it was him making them right. Like the third or fourth and one that he, I think they're running duo to the left and he just bounces it and makes Riley Moss miss.

5:52Dave Helman: That's like, can you even imagine any of the Chiefs running backs last year trying that? That play was dead to rights and like changed the complexion of the second half as well because it's 14-7. If they don't get it, the Broncos get the ball in plus territory in a seven-point game. it was not happening in the middle of that play. Like Denver mauled Kansas City on that particular play and Riley Moss was there when he bounced it and he just said, no thanks. Like that is what you daydream about when you sign that contract. Like this is why we're doing it. And he delivered it to you in a clutch moment in week one.

6:28Robert Mays: We had truly like blockbuster moves by both of these teams in the off season to upgrade and change the complexion of their offenses. The Chiefs signed Kenneth Walker, the Broncos traded for J. Woodwaddle.

6:41Dave Helman: That actually stings even more. You had to trade capital to get him. And he'll probably have a fine season, but the fact that he was non-existent today and Kenneth Walker was the best player on the field, that's pretty insane. You know what I hate? He got three targets on the night, which is absolutely ridiculous. And I know Sean Payton's not calling the plays. We can get to that in a minute. Even if he's not, I don't know. Like you can't just let the Chiefs take Jalen Waddle away. Like if if you're Sean Payton is one of the best play callers of recent NFL history. And if Davis Webb is good enough to take the play calling duties away from Sean Payton, you can't let them just take Jalen Waddle away.

7:23Dave Helman: And then on top of that, when he did finally get a nice look on a key third down when this was still a game, he dropped the ball. Just I'm I'm really in my feelings about Jalen Waddle's Denver debut.

7:35Robert Mays: I didn't mean to speed run us to the Broncos offense conversation. We can save that for a little bit later. I want to sit in the Chiefs for a little bit longer. Obviously, the run game, everything you could have wanted it to be, the fact that they leaned on it the way that they did. I mean, everything we projected about what the offense might try to be in terms of their identity this offseason, they leaned into every element of that over the course of this game. If you were trying to build a case for why you should be excited about this specific version of the Chiefs, it started with them being more of a run first team and at the very least a more explosive team on the ground.

8:11Robert Mays: Check, check. The other part of it was we have a little bit of an injection of youth and juice on defense. What is that going to mean for this team? It's unfortunate that Munster Delaney came out after the first drive, but he played one drive and had an interception. And then you look at what the defense in the secondary and the front looked like compared to what it looked like last year. I remember, Derek, we talked about this at some point last season when we were just really ruminating on how the Chiefs felt different than they felt when they were at their best. And the offense obviously is the starting point for that conversation.

8:45Robert Mays: And we can talk about the passing game here in a second. But the other element of that was when they were blitzing on defense, it just didn't have the teeth that we're so used to them having when they're sending extra bodies at the quarterback. In this game today, 30.3 % blitz rate. Bo Nix finishes 2 of 9 for 13 yards against the Blitz. He was pressured on 45.5 % of his dropbacks per next gen. Ready? 2 of 10 for 5 yards when pressured in this game, Bo Nix was. That's disgusting. We'll talk about the Broncos' culpability in that. The Chiefs defense deserves a lot of credit. And I really liked the version of the Chiefs defense that we saw, especially when they were at full strength when Delane was in there.

9:33Robert Mays: This was a team, and Tremar Conner was hurt today, but I don't imagine, I'm not sure how much he'll be in their plans anyway. Them playing, when they were in their dime look, they had four corners on the field. Sneed, Chris Roland-Wallace, who is a slot corner, Delane, and Noel Williams. And then they had two safeties and one linebacker. And they're going to play and can play a decent amount of man coverage in those looks. that version of the Chiefs defense that's the one I wanted to see and we got a really fun glimpse at that tonight

10:01Dave Helman: you got a bunch of the man coverage stuff like there was a play at the end that Noel Williams makes and the game was already kind of out of hand but like he makes a great play on Troy Franklin the interception that the lane gets like he's just one on one with his guy like the fact that that's the thing like the dream for what the defense was going to look like is Spags can blitz again and they can play man to man coverage the way that they want to and I think you saw literally on the first drive the fact that Dave mentioned it I think he calls a double corner blitz on the First play of the game.

10:27Dave Helman: First play. I was like, oh, Spags is back. We're back. And like, so you get what felt like Spags calling a defense the way that he wanted to call it. Because I think the last couple of years, they'd become more of a like zone based defense. And they were good at that at first. And then just a couple of things fell away. Some guys get older. Some of the corners start to fall away. It doesn't feel like their defense anymore. Now they're playing kind of like they did earlier in the Spags era where it was more like blitz and man coverage. but now they have the talent to do it. And I thought up front, their front four actually looked really good.

10:59Dave Helman: Like Chris Jones was good. Karloff just had, I think, three pressures in this game. Our Mason Thomas had a couple of nice plays. That inside win he had against McGlinchey. Great play. And you even got...

11:09Robert Mays: FAU had a play.

11:10Dave Helman: Yeah, on one of the Bo Nicks, I think the fumble strip sack. He like, again, I think he beats through the center and then he's able to go, Chris Jones comes and cleans it up. And it's like, if everybody's making plays on this defense, It's such a dynastic thing. Like, it reminds me of the Patriots back in the day that LeJarius Sneed went to the wilderness for a couple years, just in abysmal time in Tennessee, and he's back here in the lineup. And, like, if I didn't know what's been going on with him, I would just assume he'd been there the whole time.

11:44Robert Mays: Well, I think moving him inside is actually, it makes a lot of sense. That's what he did at the beginning of his career. I mean, he was a slot corner early on, and now that he's, I mean, physically, he's just diminished compared to what he was. I mean, that knee is obviously a huge issue and was in Tennessee. So putting him inside and asking him to do just a little bit less than you would have when he was at his best, I think it actually makes a ton of sense.

12:04Dave Helman: He might be diminished, but him and then, and we were high on Noel Williams in the summer, but like they just brought a physicality to the game. Like you could just feel them when they made contact with Broncos players, both of them.

12:18Robert Mays: Noel Williams is one of those guys that I was so excited to see how he would play this year. and the returns were immediate, immediate. What he's doing against the run, the physicality he's bringing, just across the board, extremely impressed with what that element of the Chiefs defense looked like. And this is the formula. It is, can we run the ball? Can we play really good defense? Can we be that sort of team in a way that we've never really tried to be before? And unfortunately, and we do have to talk about this, you're going to have to be that sort of team if the passing game looks the way that it did in this game because for as good as the running game looked, we were at a spot at halftime where I want to get the actual numbers down because I'm curious about them.

13:01Robert Mays: At halftime in this game, Mahomes was 8 of 18 for 62 yards, 4.5 air yards per attempt. We were looking it up at halftime as we were talking. He had not completed a pass beyond the sticks in the first half of this game. So for as good as the running game was, for as exciting as the defense was for Kansas City, the passing game for the most part was still pretty DOA. And I leave this game still worried about that moving forward.

13:27Dave Helman: I am as well. Like that was one where I was like, it's funny too, because if you told me Kenneth Walker had the game he had, I would have thought the passing game would have looked better because it was like my idea with the offense was like, well, if Kenneth Walker can do this, teams are going to play them a little bit differently up front. Maybe, maybe that happens over the course of the season. But I was like, well, the passing game will have a little bit more room to breathe. And they just, they just didn't look like they had anything like there was basically the one where she rice they threw like a screen to him and that kind of worked and other than that they really weren't able to connect on that many are you talking about the touchdown yeah which i mean don't get me wrong it absolutely worked but i was going to say the biggest pops of the bra of the night for the chiefs were horrendous defensive plays by denver the calcet play is just unacceptable why would

14:10Robert Mays: you give them one when they haven't been able to move the ball throwing at the entire game i would

14:15Dave Helman: to bet my life that you could just sit back and make Mahomes keep doing that to you. And it's probably going to work out okay based on what we saw. Like when they, when that happened, I don't, Denver sent at least six guys on that play. I was like, Ooh, this feels really aggressive for how much the chiefs have shown passing. And sure enough, I mean, it's a first down on third and six regardless. And then awful tackling turns it into a 59 yard gain. I did not understand the logic there by Vance Joseph whatsoever.

14:47Robert Mays: Those 59 yards were half of their receiving production in the second half of this game. You're going to look at the numbers. Mahomes was 7 of 9 for 122 in the second half and think, ah, that looks pretty good. Half of them came on that broken play to Kelsey. And so the passing game overall, I still think there is a lot to be desired about what this

15:04Dave Helman: thing is going to look like. To go back to the Rice play, I mean, Jonah Ellis and Riley Moss had him dead to rights at the 10-yard line on a ball that he caught at the 12. And he scores on that. And that's the other thing. We can keep it on the Chiefs. But if I'm a Denver fan, and don't get me wrong, I'm well aware how bad the offense was. But we saw this last year where you had nights. Maybe you didn't have many nights that were this bad. The Jets game. The Jets game. The Raiders game. I remember. There were a couple. But the point being.

15:36Robert Mays: This is worse. This was worse than those games, by the way.

15:39Dave Helman: The overarching point is like the offense has always been a little bit of a roller coaster. The defense is the stabilizing force. And the defense was bad. The defense was horrendous tonight. The Broncos had an explosive play rate last year of 7.7%, best in the league, only behind Seattle. When I looked this up, and there was still game to play because this became a game where I could start working on my notes ahead of time. When I looked this up late in the game, they had given up an explosive play rate of 12.7%. So getting close to that.

16:11Robert Mays: Without a team that can throw the ball. Without a team that can throw the ball. One explosive on the ground, okay, through the air.

16:15Dave Helman: And that's the thing. This receiving core, I mean, I already probably felt this way going into the season. They can't do anything. I know. They cannot do anything. The fact that Rasheed Rice bounces off a guy, that's cool when the rest of the passing offense kind of works and he's like a second or third option, the fact that he might be their best pass catcher now is worrisome. Xavier Worthy, I thought like all the targets to him were borderline useless. Like, I just don't know what they even do with him at this point. And like, Taequann Thornton is kind of just a deep ball guy. Like, I really don't know how they fixed the receiving court.

16:51Dave Helman: Like, they've kind of made their bed. It's kind of crazy that the best version of the running game

16:56Robert Mays: that you could have imagined and the worst version of the passing game that you could have imagined, like they existed at the same time in this game. Like every bit of enthusiasm or optimism you would have had about the Chiefs coming into the season for all the Kenneth Walker stuff and every bit of pessimism and fear you would have about the passing game existed simultaneously in this game.

17:14Dave Helman: It's honestly really fitting because when we've talked about the Chiefs in the summer, it's will it be enough? Yes, the running game is going to be more explosive. Yes, we trust that to be true. Will it be enough? Well, it was enough here. Some of that is because Denver kind of imploded, but. I think it could be enough in a lot of the games the Chiefs play, but...

17:33Robert Mays: I disagree with that. You have to be better throwing the ball against an offense that is functional if you're going to continue to win football games. They have to be better than they were tonight. That's not even a negotiable point.

17:44Dave Helman: I am baking in the idea that it will be better than what this was. But it does have to be. It has to be, though. It has to be. You can't win this exact game that many times.

17:53Robert Mays: I will put a number on that, and we will use that as a way to get into the Broncos conversation. In this game, the Kansas City Chiefs threw 18.5 % of their passes to the sticks. Okay? That is an untenable number. The team right ahead of them that finished 29th this weekend was at 29%. The league average was 39%. The Chiefs were at 18.5%. Here's where it gets very fun. There were two teams that finished below the Chiefs in the percentage of their throws to the sticks in week one. One of them was the Cooper Rush Falcons. They finished at 18.2%, negative six average air yards to the sticks. My favorite number here, 104 % of the Falcons receiving yardage came on yak because they kept throwing the ball behind the line of scrimmage.

18:40Robert Mays: That's all really gross. Guess who was worse? Probably. Was it the guy who just played? Was it Denver? No, not by those numbers exactly, but overall it was a quality passing offense. The Denver Broncos today, per next gen, The Falcons were at negative 0.41 EPA per play. Overall on offense. The Broncos were at negative 0.45. So they were worse. They had a 29.8 % success rate that Broncos did tonight, which was the worst of all of week one. They had 14 successful plays in the game. 14.

19:21Dave Helman: Double that might not be good enough to win a football game. That's so gross.

19:24Robert Mays: The Rams in the disaster class that the Rams put on had 24.

19:29Dave Helman: Exactly. That's almost double, and that was not close enough to get the Rams in the game.

19:33Robert Mays: They had 24.

19:35Dave Helman: Do you know how many plays the Broncos ran?

19:39Robert Mays: 47. 14 successful plays on 47 plays. They had two explosive plays. Talked about this earlier today. Every other team in the league except for the Titans had at least four in week one. negative 0.57 EPA per drop back for the Broncos in this game. They threw the ball 70 % of the time. They averaged 3.6 yards per pass. The Falcons were at 4.5.

20:07Dave Helman: It's real gross, man. This is like every single fear you could have had about this offense. And honestly, the thing is like, no, no, no, no. The whole team. Yes, yes. Oh, yeah. This is like everything the Broncos did tonight. It was like a worst case scenario for if you were a Broncos fan with anxiety heading into the season between the offense no showing. Again, the defense playing far below its standard. And we can get into this in a minute. Like your early return on play calling and the whole transition from Sean Payton to Davis Webb. There's no way you feel good about that right now.

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23:45Robert Mays: I don't think we came down on some other teams last night that hard that looked bad in week one. It was a lot of new staffs, new play callers, new situations, week one. I think you can explain away a lot of stuff in week one for teams that are starting over again. We mentioned it again last night. You think about what the Jags looked like early last season, what the Bears looked like early last season. Sometimes these things can take a little while for you to settle into being the team that you want to. Should that be the case in year four?

24:12Dave Helman: Not in year four. And like, and we, you could probably, we could say this about the Rams and we were pretty harsh about the Rams. You can make a case that the Broncos have the best roster in football, or at least one of the top three or four. And the fact that they came out this flat immediately.

24:26Robert Mays: That's hard for me to do. I think the Rams definitively have a better roster than the Broncos. The Broncos are more complete. They might be the best roster in the AFC. It's on a short list.

24:34Dave Helman: And I think if we remove the quarterback, it makes it a little bit easier to make the case for the Broncos. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. What's fun, we're splitting hairs here. I'm right there with you, but all the shit that makes you feel good about the Broncos roster looked bad tonight. I was going to say, nobody looked good. There's not a single player that looked good.

24:53Robert Mays: Also, the Rams flew to Australia to play that game. I'll give them a little bit of a mulligan. The Broncos flew to Kansas City. Yes. It's a 90-minute flight. I think I'm going to give the Rams a little bit more grace for how that thing looks.

25:05Dave Helman: It was really humid, guys. It was really humid in Kansas City. Oh, my God. If I, like, this is the most copium ever, but I just have to lean into it because I'm invested in the Broncos. obviously something I don't feel good about right now. But the amount of weird shit that happened in this game, I assume because of the humidity, I'm at least filing it away in the back of my mind. Keep in mind, Creed Humphrey put two snaps on the ground in this game. So like it affected both teams. Oh man, you are really telling yourself a story here. Bo Nix had two balls slip out of his hands like unprompted.

25:38Robert Mays: The numbers they had in this game should be the result of a monsoon. It should be that Dolphins-Steelers game from Monday Night Football in 2006 or whatever game. The ball should stick in the ground when it hits it for you to have the numbers that the Broncos had on offense today. Humidity be damned.

25:55Dave Helman: Ask Ichiro Suzuki about Kansas City in August, okay? That's all I'm saying. I do think you make a good point, though, that nobody looked good. It's a shit point, but it's all I have right now. But like I do when that many players struggle with the football on the same night, it does make me wonder. It's not a good enough excuse for the performance the Broncos.

26:16Robert Mays: It's not even the beginning of the start of a fraction of a good enough excuse for the performance the Broncos had tonight. And because some of it, some of these guys looking bad was not just the ball handling stuff.

26:27Dave Helman: Like the Broncos offensive line just did not look as good as they typically do. the Bo Nicks the late third quarter strip sack I think it's the one where Felix on the DK Uzama gets there first they look like they're going to pressure and then they drop out and they drop all of their guys to the offense's right and Denver has like a screen to that side.

26:47Robert Mays: It was a three down lineman look and so it was a funky look up front.

26:51Dave Helman: And Nick sees them drop out to like where the screen is going and just freaks out and doesn't throw it and holds the ball and he gets strip sacked. It was stuff like that like RJ Harvey late in the game almost got Bo Nix strip sacked again because Nick Bolton came firing on a blitz and almost got there. He got his hand on it and we were debating whether or not that was a fumble. It was just stuff like that all game. Troy Franklin, the only time that he gets open is he's having to throw a guy off and get offensive pass interference. Waddle dropped a pass that you mentioned. It just didn't feel like any of the Broncos players played well except like Evan Ingram caught that touchdown on the first or second drive and that was about it.

27:26Dave Helman: It was a really cool pass. That's what they did.

27:28Robert Mays: Waddle in the backfield. We had one moment where we were like, oh man, Davis Webb is cooking. And it lasted a drive.

27:33Dave Helman: Well, let's bring up like the, well, there are so many bad sequences here. But with everything that we just said, and even after the Kenneth Walker explosive touchdown, it's 21-7. It was still there to be a football game. Jalen Waddell drops third down as you're driving to try to tie. And even then it could still be a football game because of whatever the hell the miscommunication was between Mahomes and Xavier Worthy. it looked like leads to an interception return that puts you on the plus five with a chance to make it 21-14. That drive went negative eight yards over four plays. Pat Bryant draws a holding call that bumps you back to the 15.

28:13Dave Helman: Bo Nix does the Aaron Brooks, just lost the football out of the back of his hand, back it up even further, and then you have no... It was humid. It was very humid, Robert. Thank you for reminding everybody at home. And then you kick a field goal to keep but a two score game. Like that was such an abysmal sequence. You have young players getting penalties. You have inexcusable turnover issues. You can blame the play calling if you want to. Did you see Sean Payton's quote at halftime about play calling by the way? Oh, that was good. Lorna Rutledge asked him about like, how's it feel not calling plays?

28:48Dave Helman: And he said, ask me in another half. Which his answer then... That was before the bottom dropped out of this thing. I was going to say, his answer now probably is a lot worse than what it would have been to have. I'm nervous about that, if I'm being honest.

29:01Robert Mays: How can you not be? I mean, just the dynamics, they were already complicated with that handoff occurring. Now, when you have this sort of performance in week one, and again, if it was mediocre, whatever, the idea that your passing offense was less functional than the Cooper Rush Falcons yesterday is a really rough place to start.

29:23Dave Helman: They played a game that we might get to the end of the season, and this will be like the worst passing game of the season. Like that is entirely possible. This is not beaten at any point. And the other thing, it's a small thing, but I mentioned this before we actually went on to the show. Them handing off the play calling thing was already kind of weird enough. Doing it in the year where you have to figure out if you want to pay the quarterback is like an extra layer of weird. I love that you think that they're thinking about not paying the quarterback. I mean they shouldn't be thinking about paying the quarterback If it was me

29:58Robert Mays: But that to me almost feels like a done deal Based on what he's done And how they talk about it If he's going to keep doing that It's not my money I'm not making a decision They have Walmart money

30:10Dave Helman: They've got enough of it to throw around I hear you but we thought Stroud's deal was done Way ahead of time too This was the team that came an unfortunate ankle break Away from at least being in the Super Bowl and like if this, we're getting ahead of ourselves because I'm not. We don't need to litigate Bo Nix contract stuff. But all I'm saying, if this season is like a disaster, it changes all the conversations about Bo Nix. That is so far down the line. I'm really not, I'm like sitting on the edge of panicking, but I'm going to not panic for the time being.

30:46Robert Mays: I think because it's a staff, even with a new play caller, it is a staff overall with extreme continuity. on both sides of the ball. It's not that Davis Webb was here. And even if we're, I mean, obviously the staff turned over, like Joe Lombardi is no longer there. And so the people that are in charge of the game planning process and all of that, like there are shifts in how that's happened. I don't want to minimize that. But I think when you consider the defense carrying over, Vance Joseph has obviously been there. This defense has been one of the best in the league. Sean Payton, even if he's not calling plays, him and Davis Webb have still been very central to how the process has gone offensively for the Broncos.

31:24Robert Mays: When you consider all of that and you look at the product on the field, I think it's pretty clearly the most concerning performance from week one. I'm willing to give the Rams a little bit of the benefit of the doubt considering they flew halfway around the world to play that game.

31:37Dave Helman: I was actually thinking about that right before we went on because of the four finalists from last year, three had just outright terrible week ones. And the Seahawks, obviously, they weren't terrible. they lost their quarterback for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time.

31:54Robert Mays: It seems like it's going to be a short amount of time. I come away from that game feeling very good about Seattle because that's one of those games that you should lose. And they were just like, f*** you.

32:05Dave Helman: Don't misunderstand me. I feel great about the Seahawks overall, but it is funny that the one of the four teams that got the win doesn't have their quarterback. At least for the time being. It was a very weird week for teams that leave you as the elite of the elite. And it's interesting that you say that because like, okay, Rams, I'm right off the top of my head, Rams, Broncos, I'll throw the Cowboys in there for sure. Yeah. Patriots, like who else is in the conversation for like just that?

32:37Robert Mays: Those are probably the three teams. And I think I would feel...

32:39Dave Helman: Chargers was... Chargers was bad too. But again, they probably weren't that level, but still... New offensive staff.

32:45Robert Mays: And beyond, I know it's a new play caller in Denver, but the head coach that was the play caller, Like there's still enough continuity with people who were in the building that I feel less inclined to give them the grace that I would give other people in this process.

33:00Dave Helman: Denver and New England. And I like both had awful, awful first weeks and losing AJ Brown for, I mean, at least a month, if not more is pretty tough. But like in terms of the actual performance, because New England was driving to win that game at the end of the day, even after all the bullshit. Yes. Denver, this performance, yeah. I think you're right. I had to work my way through it, but I think you're right.

33:26Robert Mays: Tough look on both sides of the ball. Tough start on both sides of the ball for the Broncos. I don't think I said that they threw 17.9 % of their passes to the sticks in this game.

33:35Dave Helman: Oh yeah, you were dancing around with the Chiefs, but 17.9 is crazy. They dead last.

33:39Robert Mays: 17.9%.

33:40Dave Helman: And a lot of that, some of that is by design, but like also, and I don't remember the number, but I looked up last year when I was talking about Bo Nix. He, when he gets pressured, does not throw at the sticks. And he was pressured a lot in this game. And you just got, I mean, you brought up the stats earlier. He was pressured a lot in this game and just didn't. He's just a quarterback who it's going to be check down, scramble, or not something at the sticks.

34:02Robert Mays: Sean Payton, Troy Eakman said during the game that Sean Payton told his wife to draft Jalen Waddle in fantasy football this year. Wonder what that conversation is going to look like when he gets home. Probably not as bad as the conversation he's going to have

34:13Dave Helman: with Davis Webb over the next couple of days. having read the story from the playoffs about what Sean Payton's game planning meetings are like that feels like it's going to be a long talk

34:25Robert Mays: Bronco staff is going to be spending 18 hours a day at the facility from here on out through the rest of the season it's going to be real fun for everybody alright that is all we've got with our Monday night recap from week one the Monday hangover is going to be available in your podcast feeds as you are listening to this if you're listening to it on the podcast feed obviously all the Monday and Thursday recap will be available in audio form throughout this season. That's the first time that we're doing this, but same schedule that we've always had on top of that. They won't replace the daily shows that are coming.

34:56Robert Mays: So the Hangover is in your podcast feed right now. If you're watching this on YouTube after noon central on Tuesday, you can also check out the Hangover on YouTube. If you are watching this on YouTube, if you are new to the channel, we would encourage you to like and subscribe. Got a lot of new people that have joined us over the last month or so. Very excited about that. Excited to keep things rolling. We have multiple video-specific, video-first franchises that will be on the YouTube channel this year. My Did You Notice series is back. Derek is back with How It Happened, and Dave is joining the fray this year for the first time.

35:32Robert Mays: When's that coming out? I recorded it tonight.

35:35Dave Helman: It's called That Rocked. It's basically just going to be me spotlighting under-the-radar performances that I really enjoyed. I honestly don't know when it airs, but probably soon if I recorded it tonight.

35:46Robert Mays: That rocked fitting for the Dave Hellman brand. That's right. All right. That is all we've got for today. Sincerely appreciate you guys joining us. We'll talk to you very soon.

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