Week 14 Hangover: Hunting for relevant 2026 needles in the 2025 haystack for four also-rans

0:03Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays the week 14 hangover is here me and Eric Klassen hit two games from the week 14 slate that we did not get to on the Sunday night recap, chatted a little commanders Vikings, what this game looked like for Minnesota and kind of fulfilling the type of team we thought they might be coming into the season in terms of the plan, what this kind of says about the multi-year outlook and just the future for Washington and how dicey and scary that looks. And then we also chatted a little Titans Browns, which was way more fun and way more entertaining than I think any of us could have expected coming into that one.

0:40So enjoy digging into this with Derek. Let's get to it right now.

0:49It's the week 14 hangover. I cannot believe it's already week 14. I guess I probably can considering there's going to be snow outside in Chicago for the rest of my life, I think, based on how the last couple of weeks have gone. So we are in that part of the year, but the fact that we're 14 weeks into the season this is our 14th one of these it's hard to wrap my head around right now it's a little i mean the middle of the season is always a blur right like the beginning of the season's super exciting you remember everything that happens for the first month and then you kind of just put your head down and like do the work until you look up and you realize every fort every week 14 game basically was like somebody's in or out of the playoffs and you're like oh this shit really matters that's that's where we're at that we talked about that a lot last night where it just felt like this is not much of that show yeah of course that's the whole point of this show but the fact that last night we just kind of like sat there as the dust settled i was like holy shit chiefs the browns aren't gonna or the chiefs the ravens aren't gonna make the playoffs it was it was that sort of week in the nfl but that's not what we're here to discuss we're here to discuss the games we did not talk about last night we're talking about two of those today we're gonna dig into titans browns a little bit later a barn burner of a Titans Browns game yesterday.

1:58But we're going to start with the Minnesota Vikings beating up the Washington Commanders 31 to nothing. Where do you want to start this conversation? I feel like there are a few different jumping off points we could zero in on. I mean, I feel like the easiest is the fact that Washington's offense clearly had no answer for Brian Flores turning up the heat to a million. Like they blitzed basically the entire game. And I do think you saw a little bit in the second in the first half, they were blitzing them constantly, like really bringing five, six bodies as often as possible. And I thought, you know, what we talked about so much with Washington's offense last year is they did a really good job of formationally getting into good pass protection stuff, having two tight ends, maybe putting them both on the same side.

2:39You slide the protection, all that stuff. They did almost none of that in the first half. It felt like and they were getting got and really putting it on Jaden Daniels to either scramble or beat the blitz. and so in the second half you saw them adjust a little bit and then in the second half the the Vikings were just popping out of it and only rushing for like I thought Brian Flores called an absolutely delightful football game they were running scared the entire game Washington's offense was and I'll say this this is the first things first in terms of like the general scope and rhythm of the game this ends 31 to nothing Washington was in plus plus territory twice and came away with zero points and so you look at 31 to nothing and you think oh my god and And then you go watch the first Washington drive and they get down inside the five yard lines.

3:21Like, how did they not score any points in this game? And the answer is they came away empty on their opening drive where they had multiple shots from like the three yard line. And then I think it was on the first drive of the second half where they get down to like the plus 20 or so. And they have a fourth and three. And that is the screen that Jaden Daniels throws directly to Andrew Van Ginkle, who seems to do this like three or four times a year. And so while it was 31 to nothing and while Minnesota controlled almost every aspect of this game, it wasn't quite as ugly as the final score would lead you to believe.

3:55I realize this would make you pretty limited as an offense, especially in those situations. Would you ever throw a screen at Andrew Van Ginkle? Like ever? Like why would you do it? Like he is the only guy in the league who can consistently do this to you. I know you got to keep him honest and stuff, but like it's he does this way too often. There are other ways to keep teams honest. And the frustrating part is that the play before that they run. It's a little bunch to the left side on third and three and they have a quick out. And he kind of sails it a little bit for Noah Brown. And Terry McCorn was wide open on that play.

4:28And so he Jane Daniels misses that throw, pushes them into the fourth and three. And that's when Van Ginkle makes that play. But I'm with you. It just felt like they were running for their lives for most of this game. And I think it was a combination of some quick pressure stuff. I mean, the one that really looms large in my mind, Harrison Smith just came completely unblocked coming off the left side on one play. I think it was in the second half. But even when they were bringing four or it was just one on one scenarios with defensive linemen, Jonathan Grenard had like two quick pressures in this game that forced Jaden Daniel into scramble mode, both literally and figuratively a couple different times over the course of this one.

5:01And so it really did feel like Washington's offense just had very few answers over the course of this entire thing. and it was frustrating too because i they ran the ball for especially when jayden daniels was in the game they were actually running the ball okay when daniels was in uh i don't know what their overall success rate is because to me it didn't matter once jayden daniels was out but they had a 45.5 success rate and they got a couple of those runs to pop like i thought that that was something maybe they could have continued to tap into because then that helps keep minnesota out of some of the the you know blitz looks that they really like i guess in my mind maybe the opposite of that is like if a team is going to be in some of these loaded fronts they're going to do weird blitz stuff for you it's going to be a gash or be gashed game and maybe washington just doesn't think their backs are explosive enough to play that way like maybe that was their calculus but i would have liked to see them before the game got too out of hand like run the ball a little bit more because they were doing it well i think that's part of the problem is the game did get a little bit out of hand by the time you got to the early part of the second half and again they were moving the ball fairly well on a couple of those drives and when you come up empty and now suddenly you're down 17 to nothing.

6:06I think the way that you can approach the game changes and that it changes even more when you're starting quarterback goes out of the game and then you're playing with Marcus Mariota for most of the second half. And so the offensive thing just started to unravel a little bit on the other side of the ball. It really does feel like in a lot of ways, this is the type of offense the Vikings wanted to be at the start of this season. Like this is the first time all since week two. I want to say that the entire Minnesota Vikings offensive line was playing together. I think you have to go all the way back to like week two because Donovan Jackson and Ryan Kelly like switched off in weeks three and four.

6:43So it's been a really long time since this group has played together. And listen, the Washington defense is bad, but the fact that Minnesota could just line up and run the ball, they had a 50 % rushing success rate in this game. They averaged 4.8 yards to carry. They had 34 carries for 162 yards. That was the driving force and the engine of the offense. that's what it was supposed to be coming into this season and they have never really been able to tap into that version of this thing and not every defense is going to be Washington but you kind of saw the vision of like what the Vikings actually wanted to be this year with what they put on the field yesterday they needed to stabilize the offense like around JJ McCarthy to let this stuff work because he is I think with where he's at in his development he the best things he does are if he can get to the top of his drop and just rip whatever his first read is, whether it's one of those outbreakers, a couple of the in breakers he'll throw every now and then it's like a really nice seam ball.

7:35They can do that. It's just you kind of want to be in those first and tens, second and threes where the playbook is open and you can be in comfortable spots to do that. And so them running the ball. Well, there were a couple of reps where Kelly and Donovan Jackson, when they got four hands on somebody, they were kicking ass. And so if they can look like that for the stretch, it's like maybe you can start to sell yourself on what it looks like again next year. The JJ McCarthy aspect of this game was just fascinating. And I want to go through the Vikings second touchdown drive that their drive to go up 14 to nothing.

8:08The first drive is kind of ho-hum. He a couple of decent throws from JJ as a quick out that's well placed to Hawkinson. And then they run a play on it down in the red zone on the touchdown to Josh Oliver. It's two seams from the tight ends with hitches on the outside against cover three. whatever tight end he wanted to pick on that was wide open for a touchdown. Again, that's the state of the Washington defense at this point. So that the first drive was kind of whatever the second touchdown drive. It is. It was the most JJ McCarthy experience you could possibly have in ways, both good and bad.

8:42He has a scramble on third down to pick up a first down on an outbreak or off play action. He throws it five feet over Jordan Addison's head. They get a second and 10 draw for Jordan Mason for a chunk. he takes a very bad sack on second and seven which uh his feet bring him to the check down there the check down is wide open he just does not throw it he just chooses not to throw it i was literally just wrote this the the jj second and seven sack early in the second quarter just hit the check down man like it's right there young quarterback struggle with it so much and he knew to do it and he just didn't take it and that's one of those plays where again you don't want to we don't want to be like screenshot warriors here where you're looking at the play and pressing pause and be like, well, why don't you throw it to this guy who's wide open?

9:26We have no idea where he's supposed to be going with the ball. We don't know what the progression is supposed to look like, but on that play specifically, you see the timing of the play marry up with the check down releasing. He turns to look at the back in the flat and then does not throw the ball and takes a sack. He throws next play, throws like a little quick out to nailer for a first down. Great. On the second and eight following that he bounces around in the pocket, has no idea where to go. panics, takes another sack. And then the play after that, it's a third down and he rips a whole shot to Jordan Addison on the left sideline.

10:01And so that's, you're kind of watching all of this. And there were a handful of decent moments in this game. I think overall the performance was better, but he still just feels so uncomfortable and erratic in so many of these moments in the pocket. And so that is the element of this that needs to get better, but we're going to look at the final score and I think people are going to want to wave away the actual reality of what he looked like down to down and I think it was more similar to other performances from this season than you might want to believe given the final result it was and I think again some of the steadying factors that they got where they were able to get in and he did make a couple of good throws like the Addison throw there the throw he does make the Josh Oliver for the first touchdown the even the his last touchdown to uh TJ Hawkinson like he throws the shit out of that ball nuts I think those throws into the flat on the goal line are like way tougher than people realize.

10:52And I thought that that was like a really impressive ball from him. But again, you still got too many of the like we need to settle down here type of plays. Like to me, the most frustrating rep that he had in this entire game was there was about seven minutes left in the third quarter. And to the left hand side, they have two tight ends lined up next to each other. The outside guy runs this little like corner stop route and under it, the inside tight end runs just like a little sit route on the hash. and they have the back swinging out to that side. So you probably want to read that side. And so he, but they have to the right side, the opposite side, Justin Jefferson on like one of those 10 yard outbreakers.

11:26He starts to play looking at Jefferson, which doesn't really make any sense. Like you're either going to throw that or you're not. So he looks at it, comes off of it, goes back to the play side, bounces around for two seconds, comes back to Justin Jefferson late and just like throws the ball contested. It's like, there's just not a clear understanding or rhythm to what he's reading or what he's seeing. and what's frustrating about that is and we don't know what's going on in the building right we do we have no idea but when you talk to other quarterbacks who have played in this offense played for Kevin O 'Connell I think one of the strengths of the staff is their ability to communicate okay we're going to make your purview on this play very small okay when we're lining up and we're running this play here is why we're running this play here's what we're trying to accomplish on this play.

12:13Here's why you were reading out this play the way that you're reading it out. I think they do a good job of communicating. Again, this is based on talking to people in the building that have played the position. I think they do a good job of communicating the intent behind the place. And so that's, what's a little bit frustrating about watching his seeming lack of understanding of what the intent of those plays is and how, again, just kind of scattershot that his process can be as he's going through some of this stuff. And so that brings you to like the question of why is this happening? Is there some sort of disconnect between how he's being, how the offense is being communicated to him?

12:49Or is this something that he's really struggling with? And that part of it, there's really no way to understand like where the gaps are and why they exist. Yeah. And it might too just be like, he is a young player and it might just take him two years of trying to do this for him to figure out what the rhythms of that is. And like, again, whether or not Minnesota wants to do that, we'll see. But like, I do think that like he's just going to need a lot of reps doing this, because again, when he was at Michigan, it was a very pared down passing offense. It's one of those things where I think the greatest trick that we fall for sometimes with quarterbacks is like if they played under center in college, we're like, oh, it was pro style.

13:24And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like they can still game it up in a way that is really, really easy. We did this with Nathan Peterman coming out of Pitt, too. And I think that was definitely the case in Michigan. And so I think there was just maybe more of a learning curve in that way than maybe we realized. Again, really impressed by a couple of individual performances in the Vikings defense. Like, I just think Eric Wilson's having such a good season and he's a free agent this year. He's 31 years old. It's just kind of like a random career year for a guy that was on like a one year,$2 million deal this season.

13:56He played really well. It was nice to have Grenard and Van Ginkle back together that you could feel those guys. And I do think the part of the reason that the Vikings defense has struggled relatively this year is that when your offense is this bad, it's really hard to maintain like a solid level of defensive performance. The offense in this game, I mean, they're that second touchdown drive. They marched down the field. It was like 15, 17 plays. They had the ball for so long. And so that just hasn't happened that often this year for this Vikings defense. And so I still feel good about this group moving forward.

14:28I still feel good about what they can be. obviously there are going to be some massive questions that the Vikings have to answer and ask themselves about who's going to be the quarterback and what the plan on offense is next year we've talked a lot about that we've talked less about the multi-year outlook for this Washington team and this one becomes pretty interesting pretty quickly Washington has the oldest roster in the league they are now slated to be picking I mean in the top 10 right I mean as it currently stands, they're three and 10. I can't imagine they'd be better than that. Yeah, they're three and 10.

15:03I believe they right now are projected to have the sixth overall pick in the draft. Here's the problem. That's one of the only picks they have in this draft. They do not have their second round pick. They do not have their fourth round pick in this draft because of the Laramie Tunsil trade. They have two picks in the first four rounds. They only made five picks last year. And so now you're looking at two lean draft classes just in terms of how many picks that you have you have the oldest roster in the league let's go back to previous drafts in 2024 they had six top 100 picks six how many of those guys are like real positive contributors to the ball club right now here are the six names i was gonna say i'm the quarterback but other than that jayden daniels johnny newton mikey saner still ben sinnett brandon coleman luke mcafree those are their six top 100 picks the the last three are nothing burgers basically saner still i it saner still i still think long term even though if he's had a little bit more of a down year i still think long term that's a player that i'm willing to buy in on and then i think newton has been a little bit of a disappointment like he has moments but i don't think for what you where you drafted him he has been like the difference maker you probably wanted him to be let's just go through the reality for all of these players okay johnny newton they felt like they needed to pay javon kinlaw and free agency this year he johnny newton has not been that productive mikey saner still i'm with you i do think that the multi-year outlook for mikey saner still and he's now playing outside again because they've had injuries to trey amos and marshall latimore i think i still think that mikey saner still can be a solid player moving forward ben sinnet has been has done very little for this team as a second round pick.

16:48Brandon Coleman is a player that I was excited about coming into the season. He gets unseated by Chris Paul at left guard. We'll see if he can retain that job next year. Chris Paul is going to be a free agent. So this is a third round pick. And by the time, if he's a starter by your third year, I think you can feel okay about that. But so far, he's somebody that's been supplanted and Luke McCaffrey is on IR right now. And you didn't feel good enough about Luke McCaffrey to not trade for Debo Samuel this off season. And so they replaced or kind of jumped the line on several of these guys with some moves that they made this offseason and very few of them are actually contributing.

17:22And so you have, let's say, generously two and a half real contributors from those six top 100 picks. You made five picks in this year's draft and you have two picks in the next four rounds next year. with how many like really solid long-term pieces that you feel good about on the current version of the roster that is mostly made up of aging players that you brought back to try to like pry open this window the best that you could it's not a good situation it's a terrible situation and a lot of these players i think that one of the biggest issues with how old some of these players are is a lot of them are in like the middle of their the middle of their units like zach urts and obviously now he's hurt so he's probably like completely done bobby wagner look looks just continues to not look like as much of an NFL athlete as you would like outside of outside of the hash marks.

18:14I think even Frankie Louvoo, even though he's like not as old as Bobby Wagner, I think you're starting to see that he's declining a little bit like they just obviously they have brought in Von Miller this offseason like they are just at a lot of key positions and a lot of like in the middle of your team. You just have a lot of age that is going to go very quickly and you just don't have enough starters outside of that to really make up for it and also I know that like this is like tough ground to walk but the fact that a lot of a lot of the bets that they made were that Jaden Daniels was going to like kind of make everybody better because I do think when he's healthy and at his best he can do that the reality is he's like a 195 pound quarterback who has been banged up constantly and doesn't really slide yet like that's something that he could absolutely learn this offseason but he is someone who consistently puts himself at risk.

19:04And I think that if, if we're going to do all, like, I feel like with Jackson's art, it's the only thing that we talk about, but with Jaden Daniels, I think it's also a very serious consideration. It absolutely is because I think you saying that they need him to make everybody else better. That's not some theoretical thing. That was part of the calculus in terms of how they built this thing in the off season. And I'll say with the offense specifically, I do think like the multi-year outlook for the offense is okay. The quarterback's health is 100 % something to consider and to be worried about.

19:33But if he can be healthy next year, you get Terry McLaurin back, hopefully for most of the season next year, he missed a good chunk of this year. The offensive line comes back essentially intact. And even with like a decent amount of their depth. And so I feel good about that group. I do think they probably need one more pass catcher somewhere. Like that needs to happen at some point this off season. They don't have any picks or else I would say that that might be a Brandon Ayuk team. We'll see if he ends up getting traded or he ends up getting released because the one thing that this team does have next year and credit to them for not pushing all of their chips in they still have a ton of financial flexibility i mean if they move on from marshall latimore this offseason which i assume they will they're gonna have like a hundred million dollars in cap space the problem is every single year and i did it a couple weeks ago go take a look at the 2026 free agent class it's not see how many guys you want to spend a hundred million dollars worth of cap space on There aren't many.

20:30And so I think trying to do some sort of trade that allows them to use some sort of that cap space in theory sounds good. This is a team that doesn't really have any draft picks. And so the amount of rebuilding they have to do in some areas of the roster collectively, they probably don't have the total amount of resources that are going to make that very easy because on defense, how many new starters do they need on defense? How many new pieces do they need in the back seven for you to feel good about where this group is a lot still? they still need to they could yeah they could use a half a dozen new starters almost it feels like like the safety room I think is gonna need help Bobby Wagner needs to be replaced the edge group needs a lot of help could probably still use a corner like they are in a tough spot I think in terms of the defense yeah without any picks you need at least one more pass catcher you probably would like to replace your tight end with Ertz being her and Ben Sinnott not really being what you want and then I truthfully this is a team that needs running back talent desperately their running backs I don't think are that good I think the offensive line is just awesome and then obviously you have two mobile quarterbacks who kind of open up some space for you if they could get someone who's was a little bit more dynamic in there whether that means they're an explosive play threat whether that means they're a lot better out of the backfield than some of the guys that they have whatever it is I think if they could find some more flexibility and dynamism out of the backfield I actually think that would go a long way for this football team I think that's totally fair I mean the Bill Krosky merit thing that dream was short-lived he didn't get his first snap until like the back half of the second quarter yesterday and it's tough because when you You're a team that needs an injection of young talent and you need a little bit of juice.

22:00I mean, you watch this defense. We said this coming into the season. It's a slow group. It's an old group. They need an injection of just dynamic playmaking in the back seven of their defense. Well, it's hard to get younger when you don't have that many draft picks. The youngest you can go is 24, 25-year-old second contract players in free agency, and there just are not a lot of those worth paying in any individual free agent class. the last thing I'll ask you before we move on and I think we danced around it with that conversation but I want to ask you in a more direct way after last year it was all sunshine and rainbows for the Dan Quinn Adam Peters duo and like the trajectory of this franchise overall how are you feeling about the leadership the people in charge the folks tasked with overseeing the next phase of this are you at a point where you still have faith in how this is going to go Or have you kind of soured on people whose Q score was about as high as it possibly could be at the end of last year?

23:00I think I'm a little bit over and I think with GMs, it can be tricky because I think. Again, I think we've seen periods where sometimes GMs just like miss on a few picks and like do something aggressive and it gets weird and it doesn't work out. But then three years later, they end up turning a lot of things around. And so the Peters thing, I think, is a little bit more tricky to untangle. I'm pretty over this coaching staff, though. Like the fact that the defense is as simple as it is and just getting worked week over week over. I mean, how much we spent the first eight weeks of the season talking about how bad the Bengals defense was.

23:31This what the Washington commanders are right now is as bad as those Bengals teams were early in the season. And so I'm just kind of tired of watching the way that they get beat. And then offensively, I think we worried or at least I worried a little bit coming into this season of like Cliff did some really cool stuff last year. but I was kind of like do it again like prove it to me again that you can bring some new ideas and that this very unique college style of offense can work and I think I know the quarterback's health has been a big part of them not being able to produce the way that they did last year but it just doesn't feel as fresh as it did a year ago like they haven't added as much to it as I would have liked so I this coaching staff I'm a little bit they've got a lot more to prove to me even if you want to give Cliff a little bit of grace because the quarterback has been hurt for a good chunk of the year and McCorn has missed a decent amount of time in the best case scenario everyone gets healthy next year the offense gets back to what it was in 2024 it's a top five offense again well what's going to happen if that happens he's out of here right and now you're left with a defensive head coach who has struggled to find an answer on defense and some of that is talent driven there's no denying that like they do not have that many difference making players on that side of the ball but I think you comparing them to the Bengals is a good thing to do this is the thing that's bottoming out in real time.

24:49Missing Dorrance Armstrong should not bring you to this place as a defense the way that it has when you have a defensive minded head coach who has wrestled back play calling. If the offense is going to be the most important, best thing about this and Dan Quinn is going to be the one in charge, I think that's going to bring you to some difficult conversations. And so I absolutely think that this group will be back next year. I think that they'll, they should be back next year based on how last season went, but it's pretty crazy how quickly just the overall vibes and feeling around a team can change when you go from what this team was last year to what they are this year even if you thought they were going to progress a little bit this year and they were going to fall short of the playoffs and be like a disappointing eight and nine sort of team bottoming out like this is truly like the worst case scenario in a way that would have been typical to imagine that's the thing that's the part that changes the calculus to me if they just had a couple of weird bounces and one or two injuries and they won seven games I probably wouldn't feel that differently about this coaching staff but like filling in the holes of what that season would have looked like but bottoming out to where you win three maybe four games it's like that's that's a pretty wild vacillation to have all right we're gonna take a quick break here and then come back and chat a little titans browns

26:07the Tennessee Titans knock off the Cleveland Browns 31 to 29 the Titans go to a roaring two and 11 on the season the Browns are now three and ten a game that just was way more entertaining than it had any right to be based on the weather our expectations for this thing coming into it a really fun game to go back and rewatch where do you want to start this I mean I want to start by saying how like my experience with this game was that when I was watching on Sunday I this was a game that I did not have on one of my four screens and I was like I'll get to this later especially knowing that we would probably end up doing this for the hangover and I peek over in like the middle of the second quarter and there's like 30 points on the board and I was like what could have possibly happened where there are 30-ish points on the board in this game and so um I thought that part of it was fascinating I thought we were going to get potentially like a 13 10 just disgusting kind of game I think the part of it that I want to start with was Tennessee's run game and their running backs were awesome in this game like it's why they won the game it's why they won the game like Pollard had a number of nice runs TyJ Spears had a couple of he had a couple of good runs but he also had a couple of they were throwing screens to him like lining him up as like a slot receiver and just chucking some screens out especially early in the game.

27:23And that I think was probably the best thing that they did this game is they played very horizontal, especially early on in the passing game. They were like, we're not going to let Miles Garrett get to us. We're going to try to keep this as on the perimeter as we can. And I actually thought they did a pretty good job for a lot of this game. The power touchdown, the long power touchdown is a beautiful rep of like pin pull with like multiple gorgeous down blocks on it. Gunnar Helm does a fantastic job on that play. He takes out the linebacker and then ends up picking off the post safety to give Pollard that lane.

27:55And I think it was Van Jefferson was like 40 yards downfield throwing the final block to get him in the end zone. And so that takes it to 14 three. And then the touchdown he scored in the third quarter, that's a play where just the alignment by the Browns was a little bit surprising. Like if you, if you watch that play, the Titans are in like a spread out look and Devin Bush's Devin Bush has walked down onto the line of scrimmage and like a five man front. They don't even block him based on the overall structure of the play. And so it's five on five into a light box and it's kind of an easy touchdown.

28:28And so those runs, I mean, that was what. Powered this, the Titans to win this game. Like that was the most important element of what happened in this game. Yeah, that run, the second run where like, yeah, they end up in a lot and they end up in a light box because I think they have a Conqua on the left hand side and then they motion him to the right over into this like bunch formation. It kicks, I think, Schlesinger out of the box. And so they're left with only one linebacker in there. And then the other part of it of why it ended up popping so much, the defensive. So the back was to the quarterback's right hand side and the defensive tackle on that side tries to like backdoor through the left guard.

29:01And so you've got light box and then the Fred C is parting between the two defensive tackles. And it's like, well, who the hell is going to tackle him? Delpit's a little bit late trying to fit it in there. And Pollard just takes off and he had an awesome day. And so I thought, I just thought that, yeah, I thought some of the runs that they were able to scheme up were like really, really impressive in this game. That side of the ball was, was kind of strange. Like the run game success that the Titans were able to have. I was kind of surprised at just how much blitzing we saw from the Browns defense in that game.

29:30Like I just, I was like, you, do you need to do this against the Titans offensive line? A ton of Grant Delpit blitzes. We had some, and even when they weren't blitzing, it was a very like pressure heavy game. from them overall i mean one of the coolest plays that they had on defense schlesinger was awesome again in this game by the way he's so he is such a good player he's such a good player and so there was a at one point they brought they had like a drop eight into cover two where he was one of the blitzers and so they dropped eight into coverage but they took they sent one of the linebackers and so that happens at one point in this game it was just it was a crazy unhinged game plan from jim schwartz a lot of it worked in the passing game but my god was that the pressure he got where he kind of wins through the left tackles inside shoulder that was sick too because they had the defensive end over to that side like kind of cut across the left tackle's face a little bit so he's like you know kind of flashes of color doesn't really know where things are coming from and swestinger just fires through his inside shoulder which again the thing i really want to point out was swestinger is coming out of college i was like is he really going to be strong enough to like push through nfl offensive linemen and stuff and he just bullies through the left tackles inside shoulder then almost rips cam ward down like he's he's an awesome player there was a play in the second quarter where it was a third and four and he does a fantastic job of reading cam ward's eyes on that play while dropping in as like a whole player and the route is behind him and his eyes take him to the ball where he sticks up a hand to the route coming behind him gets, gets a hand on it, gets a finger on it, tips that ball.

31:08It's an incompletion and the Titans are punting. And so he was great. I love what Delpit did. I think a lot of the individual defensive players had a nice day outside of like those chunk runs that they gave up. I don't know how I feel right now with the Titans offensive line being like relatively healthy. There's not all the way healthy. I do think that there's like a version of this group that it just took a year, right? Like we were excited about this group coming into the season and what they could be. And it never really happened. I still have a candle lit for like what the 2025 or excuse me, the 2026 Titans offensive line might look like with one more off season together with the different coaching staff.

31:48The issues with this Titans offense personnel wise are 100 % with the pass catchers that the offensive line. I do think there's like a version of it that looks okay. Next season. I'm actually there as well. Like they, it looked tough for the first eight weeks of the season or whatever it was, but I do think that they're starting to settle in a little bit like I think Skaronsky's has been playing better and I think Latham is still up and down but I still have a lot of faith in him as a player that moving forward when he gets another year sitting on the right hand side that he's going to look good so I'm not early in the season right like the fact that he was banged up early in the year that just like it's just tough for multiple times sometimes yeah like multiple times he was in and out of the lineup and so the fact that maybe he can be a little bit healthier like I'm I'm still bought in on this and maybe it I think maybe we saw a world where they could be like one of like truly like elevating themselves into one of the better offensive lines if everything really went right maybe that's a little bit too optimistic but like i think that they can be like an average to above average unit pretty pretty solidly the other titan i wanted to mention because he had my favorite sequence of this entire game jeffrey simmons dog early in the fourth quarter it is one of the funnier like sequences of plays i can remember for an individual player he gets called for a neutral zone infraction and I think like second down.

33:05And so it takes it from like second and nine to second and four immediately on the next play, he shoots into the backfield and gets a TFL. So he gets those five yards back. And then on the next play, he gets a sack. So he gets an offside, a TFL and a sack to torpedo a drive. And that's just like one of the 10 things that he did over the course of this game. He's an absolute monster. He was insane, dude. I think he had a stop near the goal line. That was really, really impressive. Like he was just absolutely insane in this game. I also, the one minor thing with Jeffrey Simmons is I really, really love that he wears all the red.

33:43It makes it so obvious that it's like, that's the guy. That's the guy who's going to be the problem. It's one of my favorite things that good players do is when they have some sort of identifying feature when you're going back and watching it on film where there's no ambiguity about who he is. is one of my favorite things about early career JJ Watt is that he had that huge elbow brace on. And so it was always so easy to identify where he was on a given play. And so if you're a pro bowl or all pro level defender listening to this podcast, please just wear something that makes you easily identifiable to make my life a little bit easier when I'm going back and rewatching these games.

34:17Yeah. Can I, I've got two more Titans defense things that I actually want to shout out before we potentially move on from them. I there's a little something to Cedric gray. I don't know if he's I think he flies around man he flies around he really does like he plays forward I think he hits people he takes back space in the run game well I think in coverage he's he's maybe not the sexiest player but I really do think that in terms of a let's move around and try to hit shit type of linebacker I really do think that he's got a little something to him and I think he's pretty sound as a run defender between the tackles like takes on blocks well like I thought that he was impressive and then he was a fourth round pick in 2024 by the way just for people who might out of who Cedric Gray is.

34:56He was, he's a second year, fourth round linebacker is 23 years old. He plays with his hair on fire. We know that's a position that guys can occasionally break out a little bit late. And so I'm with you. Like he is somebody that when you watch this defense right now, you notice him for sure. And I think it's probably helped a little bit now that he's got Cody Barton next to him, who I, you know, is not the greatest player, but I think it's a veteran who's done this a long time. He's played in a bunch of different defenses. And so I think having like a settling presence next to him, I think has been solid.

35:21And then the other play that I really wanted to shout out was at some point in the game I forget when this was the the Browns were just inside of the five and they tried to run like a little jet from the right to the left Amani hooker flies down and pops the wide receiver so bad at the line of scrimmage and like completely decletes him I really like Amani hooker as well I think athletically when he's in space he's not the best player but again in terms of a guy who really flies downhill and try to tries to make you not want to go and play football he's a very fun player the last thing I'll say about the Titans and I'm a hundred percent with you.

35:54The play he made on the jet sweep and inside the five is just like, he saves a touchdown on that play. I mean, it's a disgusting play. I watch this Titans defense right now. This team needs a real edge player so bad. It's crazy. And I understand they traded Draymond Jones. It's a lost season, all of that stuff. But my, the little I know about the draft, I know from watching building the beast. And I'm aware of the fact that there's guys like Arvo Reese and Ruben Bain and like there are edge players in the top five of this class and especially for a team that does not need a quarterback it feels like they're going to be in position hopefully to draft one of those guys thank god because my goodness do they need one so I actually kind of want to ask you that kind of to that point how far do you think the Titans defense is from actually being kind of good I don't think they're that far I think the middle of their defense is pretty sick like the d tackles are monsters the linebacker room is solid the safeties aren't great but i think they need they need several corners though that's part of the problem i think the safeties would look better if the corners were not getting beat constantly but i think like if you could get maybe draft one decent corner you sign one find an edge player it's like i don't think they're that far away and i still think it's really well coached like i like the way that guys play I like some of the calls they're trying to get into like I there's still something about this defense that defensive court I mean Denard Wilson's likely not going to be there next year so anything they're building on with him is probably not worth getting excited about for the time being I think there's still far enough to go where I'm I'm saving my like real enthusiasm I I just think that the fact that they need multiple corners and an edge rusher like all of that stuff.

37:40I do think that they, they're there. If things do come together, maybe they're the sort of unit that like quickly gets a lot better than we expected. I don't think that's crazy, but I don't know if I'm necessarily penciling it in quite yet. That's fair. I think I was also did some bad math on yet. Denard Wilson is probably not going to be there for one reason or another. So let's get to the other side of the ball. I thought that Shadur Sanders played well in this game. I, I was, I was impressed by some of the things he did. he did here's what I'll say there were five plays I thought were very impressive there were five plays that were hilarious dude okay which which was my I think my favorite weird play that he made was in the middle of the second quarter there was a dead screen that they were trying to call to the left side and he realizes it's dead and most quarterbacks in that moment will just like dirt the ball be like plays over we'll move on he like sprints forward for five yards into the teeth of the defense and then like kind of tries to slide and dirty.

38:41And I was like, what, where did you think was going to be accomplished here? That was, well, he had that. And then he had an intentional grounding on a blown up screen as well at one point in this game. And so those are like, those are plays that were sniffed out. Like I don't have a huge issue with those. My, my favorite thing he did on the drive following the Devin Bush interception, there was a play on third and eight where he's like pointing from the pocket in the middle of the play and i was just like what what is happening here often when you'll see that on like a scramble drill where a guy is like trying to create outside of structure and he's trying to get a guy to redirect as part of the scramble drill he's in the pocket trying to like direct someone while the pass rush is getting to him so that was hilarious i mean the interception is an unacceptable unstoppable decision on like a bunch of different levels.

39:32He took a couple ugly. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you're just like, why are you throwing that? He took a couple of ugly sacks in this game, but there were like four or five throws over the course of this game where it's just like, all right, man. Like, I do think there's enough there for you to feel good about him playing for the rest of the season and just seeing how it can go. Like he clearly has deficiencies, but I think that he's aggressive as a passer. Like he's willing to let that thing rip he's accurate i mean the touchdown throw to david and joku is like a beautiful throw and so there's enough stuff for me to be intrigued by seeing more even if i do think that the low lights are pretty bad like there are times where he just looks lost but there are also times where you see what he can do as like an accurate passer from the pocket and I honestly think like so I think he had what was kind of awesome to me was the Jerry Judy touchdown he throws I remember when we were doing our pods talking about him as a prospect it was like some of his best throws were just those intermediate in breakers like if he can just in rhythm hit those and so the fact that he threw that Judy won the way that he did and he progresses to that yes like he throws that on time he gets all the way back to it on the back side he is comfortable doing that that that was a beautiful play that he had that one and then honestly one of my other favorite plays that he made.

40:50And this goes back to what we were talking about, J.J. McCarthy, the J.J. McCarthy second and seven sack he takes where his eyes bring him to the check down and he doesn't throw it. Sanders actually had a play in this game where it was about 10 minutes left in the second quarter. It's a third and six right tackle loses immediately inside shoulder, but his eyes in the progression are taking him from left to right. And he gets there to the swing. And as soon as his back foot hits, when he shuffles over there, he just throws it, lets his guy go make a play. And it was just like, I know that's simple.

41:16I know that's boring, but a lot of young quarterbacks do suck at that. Like a lot of young quarterbacks are really bad at that. So the fact that he did it, I was like, okay, man, like if you can make enough of the, just keep the offense moving plays, you let Njoku or Fannin make one play, one or two plays for you down the field. It's like, you can have something here more than you had with Dylan Gabriel. Absolutely. And I think that, I mean, the wheel route, he throws to Fannin at one point in this game down the right sideline is a beautiful throw. I'm a hundred percent with you on the check downs.

41:45I thought that him getting to check downs multiple times over the course of this game was impressive. And then not even just check downs, but like late in the progression type options on the second and 20 with like 529 left in the game. He gets all the way back to like Dylan Sampson on what is essentially like a check down on an angle route. That's the final read in the progression that becomes like a chunk gain on that same drive. he does a great job of climbing up in the pocket and finding Harold Fannin on another completion. Like there, there is enough here where it's like, okay, like I'm interested in this, especially when you consider the fact that one of my big kind of, oh yeah, the moments while rewatching this.

42:28Oh yeah. These teams are the first, they picked first and second in the NFL draft last year. Like these are bad football teams. These are bad football teams with bad supporting casts and with Cleveland, how, whatever, like glimpse of optimism I have about the Titans offensive line next year, I feel the opposite way about the Browns offensive line. All of those guys are hitting free agency. All of them, their entire starting offensive line, which we have not seen really at any point this year, because it's been in tatters for most of the season, but the tackle play on this team right now is heinously bad, like heinously bad.

43:06and you can say, well, they're banged up. They don't have their starters out there. This entire group is going to be gone next year. You don't have enough like picks and resources to rebuild this offensive line in the next year. And so maybe do you bring some of the aging pieces back? I have no idea what the plan is supposed to be for that position group specifically, because right now it is a nightmare. And if you look at what they did on the ground in this game, negative 0.2 yards before contact per carry, their running backs were hit behind the line of scrimmage on 65 % of carries. Like it's just really hard for this offense to do much considering like some of the infrastructure concerns.

43:44And when you consider that and you look at the way that he played in this game, I do think that there is enough there to be like, okay, like I'm interested in what this is going to look like for the final month or so. And the offensive line thing is frustrating too because like the young backs are good. Like Quinchon Judkins is really good. Dylan Sampson's got a little bit of something to him and obviously not part of the offensive line, But like, I think if the passing game felt a little bit more comfortable being pure dropback, like we might get even more Harold Fannin, who I think has been really, really good.

44:13And so like they the young skill players on this offense are really good. It's again, the offensive line when they are as bad as they are in this game, it makes it really, really difficult. I will say to like again, there were about five or six, maybe even more than that plays where it should. It's like, man, we've probably got to speed this up. But again, that's a young player thing. Like anyone who's only in their third start, like you're going to have to speed stuff up. That's probably how it's going to go. I think the only real actual concern I came away with from this game outside of the he's just going to need more reps, speed stuff up.

44:42That's in a young player. I do still think that there are some moments where he's trying to drive the ball that he can't quite like put it on a frozen rope the way that you want for like a top, top quarterback. But if the decision making is going to be solid and he can show that he can progress and get to check downs, it's like that's that's enough for us to start to build some things on here. And the other part of this, and I do think this is helped by a Titans pass rush that is one of the worst in the league. I actually think his pocket sense and pocket movement is better or was better in this game than I really ever expected it to be seeing him as a rookie.

45:15Like, I don't think it's great by any stretch. He bails out the back of the pocket too often. He took a bad sack doing that. But he was like stepping up and moving around the pocket in efficient ways, like several different times throughout this game. I thought that was going to be the most concerning part of what he was as a quarterback. Even when you watched him in the preseason and when you watched him at Colorado, And I actually do think him stepping up, moving around the pocket and even like doing a little bit as a scrambler was more impressive in this game than I probably expected it to be at any point this season.

45:45If he was going to play, I think he just needs to embrace that. That's who he is as a quarterback is like stand in the pocket, try to move around, make tough throws, that sort of thing, because he will do that. But there are just too many. There are like three or four times a game where I'm like, you're not the athlete that you think that you are. And that's where he starts to run himself into trouble. you need to be in a very narrow window of space he should be you want to be he wants he needs to be kirk cousins like he should watch a lot of kirk cousins film like that type of quarterback jared goff whoever it is like i think that style of of play really probably suits him more and then i do that he's a better athlete than kirk cousins is but it's like kirk cousins never tries to prove it so it's a little bit different take off when you can take off when it's there for you and he will he did have one or two in a while one or two good ones do we want to talk about the two-point play because we have to talk about the two point play which one because they actually because they went for it twice at the end of the game and the first one was not a mental error but shader sanders in the center just like can't get the exchange right and so the play is dead immediately that's the first two-pointer they go to and then the second two-pointer they go to they try to run this reverse with judkins coming from left to right and then another player coming right to left and judkins just forgets to toss it back to the other guy and you see him spin around being like oh shit and it was just like this man that you're reminded of how young a lot of these players are on this team i will say this this to me and a lot of the should do our discourse brings me to this place where it's hamlin's razor i believe is what it's called never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity like that's where i'm at with some of this and i don't think the browns coaching effort stupid i think that there are just like flubs in logical decision making in some of these situations.

47:26I don't think they're taking him off the field in that moment because they don't want him to get the glory of converting the two point play to tie the game. I think they're taking him off the field because they're overthinking this moment. Like the quarterback is playing well enough where you don't need to go to some gimmicky bullshit on the two point play. Just run a play, just run a play. I know that probably looked great all week, but even them going to the wildcat as often as they have in the red zone that got blown up in the first drive of this game when they tried to go to it. And so I think trusting the quarterback a little bit more in some of those moments is probably the right answer.

48:02If he's going to continue to show that he can make some of the plays like that touchdown throw to Njoku in the back corner of the end zone. I think I mostly agree, but like that play was open. If Judkins just tosses it like it's, I understand that. But at the same time, like at the same time, I don't think it's as open as people have made it out to be like, I don't think it's a guarantee that if he pitches them, but it it ends up converting. And I just think in that situation, it's like, eh, you need two yards. Like, let's just run an actual football play. That's fair. I don't know where I'm at with the Cleveland Browns right now in terms of like how the next couple of years or how the next year should go.

48:36Because I think on defense, there is enough there to be excited about when it comes to like the building blocks of this team, your defensive line is coming back almost entirely intact next year. I don't know what Malik Collins is contract looks like. so he was on a two-year deal so when lee collins will be back next year we'll see what his recovery looks like but i mean he was fantastic this season and he's back on like a 5.8 million dollar cap at next year obviously mason graham's going to be back you have miles garrett you have alex right who you just signed to i think a pretty modest extension as a mcguire is going to be back that's a really good group carson schwezinger is a player that guy is a real player you still have denzel ward you still have tyson campbell who you traded for and is under contract for the next several years.

49:21You still have Delpit like the, they have the bones of a real defense moving forward and they'll have resources to continue to fill this thing out in the draft, the offense. I have no idea what's going to happen here. Like part of me, I noticed the fans can give away play calling at some point this year. Part of me is just sitting here being like with an offensive centric head coach and with the offensive staff that they've built and the guy in Tommy Reese that they were excited about, even if you have a lot of talent concerns. And even if you're playing with young quarterbacks, I kind of want it to look a little bit better than this, but I still have faith if they get decent players and there are better players in there that this can be a good offensive staff.

50:02Are they bad enough just in terms of the record where this group is not going to be back next year? If it is back next year, what is the offensive line going to look like? Like part of me doesn't even want to explore any of this. Part of me just wants to be like, let's just trade Kevin Stefanski to a team that like has workable pieces and we can all stop worrying about this. But I just don't know exactly where I land on it because it is a confounding situation. It's I think the offensive line part is the trickiest part of it to me, because at least with the quarterback, it's like I think you can explain away some of the weirdness in the passing game and the ups and downs by one, just having a lot of other young players at the past catching positions but also too it's like you're working with right now the quarterback that was taking like quarterback three and four reps in the preseason and early on in camp and so it's just like them having jumbled around the quarterback reps so much I do think it would go a long way for the offense whether it's Sanders next year whether they draft the guy I don't really care but them like kind of spending a full offseason integrating one guy into the offense I think could go a long way for them it's just again I don't know what you're going to get out of the offensive line.

51:09I think even if you bring some of these pieces back, what does bringing back two of them and signing a couple of other like low level free agents and maybe one draft pick, like what does that offensive line even look like? Like that might be a pretty bad unit. And then we just might end up in the same spot that we're at right now. That's kind of where I'm at is that I do think that the multi-year rebuild on the offensive line is a little bit concerning. And I come back to this. I think that they're going to regret Mason Graham's fine. I think they're going to regret not trading back again and trying to find an offensive lineman.

51:39And there's always a chance that if you went back to like 10 or 11 with some of those teams that were trying to come up, that you were going to be out of range for all the guys that you were excited about, that you were not going to be able to get a membu and Calvin Banks was going to be gone. And so you'd be sitting there in no man's land a little bit. I think that probably drove a little bit of the decision-making. But when you think about where this team is, I know that they were in a spot where they're saying, we just need pieces, right? Like we're not close enough to be specific in the types of guys that we're seeking out.

52:08But I think with the quality of the defensive line and with no future answers on the offensive line, I would have loved them to address it somewhere in this draft to give them at least a bite at the apple for a starting tackle in 2026 and beyond. Right, and I almost think you wouldn't have maybe even needed to trade back again to do it. I know taking one of those offensive tackles ahead of Mason Graham in the time might have felt pretty crazy to people. But I feel like offensive tackle is kind of one of those positions you can get away with, quote, overdrafting a guy because everyone will be just like, ah, you know, you kind of do have to spend top 10 picks on a tackle.

52:42And so obviously this is all hindsight because Kelvin Banks looks good. Armand Manbu looks really good. And so like maybe just the fact that they already look good, I think maybe helps that argument. But I don't know if anyone would have batted that much of an eye for them doing that. It's a weird place to be where I feel pretty good about how the quarterback played and you know what the quarterback might look like over the next month and i have no idea how i feel about like the multi-year outlook for the offense whether they'll draft a quarterback it's just it's a team in a very strange place whether the coach will be there i think those are all things that we will hopefully have an answer on over the next month or so as we get toward the end of the season all right we're gonna take one more quick break and then come back and chat a little monday morning

53:22each week we like to solicit some calls from fans that are just going through it that had a rough sunday that had a rough time with their team and then given a week in the nfl we've got two of them today beller what do you got for me let's hear the first one hey y 'all love the show my name's ben i am 24 years old i'm a colts fan from los angeles california and i was born into the colts from an an Indiana-based family, and I was too young to care about the Bears Super Bowl, but I was old enough to remember the same Super Bowl. All the Colts have done my entire life is disappoint me. Andrew Luck retiring when I was a freshman at Mizzou in the Mark Twain dorm, that notification, one of the worst moments of my life.

54:07And yet, somehow I think they've popped. I think the Colts have outdone themselves today, and I really do feel like the fell for it again. idiot meme because this was always going to happen, right? Like the Colts were going to win some games with Daniel Jones and the offense, and it was going to end up, you know, not resulting in the playoffs or anything meaningful. It just happened to have to happen in the most, just absolutely kick in the face way possible. I mean, Daniel Jones popping his Achilles and you're, you know, Anthony Richardson who I genuinely feel like the Anthony Richardson experience broke me in a way that I will never be able to look at the Colts and trust them the same way after the Anthony Richardson experience like and now it's like you can't even play him because he smacked himself in the face with like a training band or whatever and it's like somehow I can't believe I left the Colts and they traded two two first round picks for a corner who got hurt like whatever I don't even know is there any light at the end of the tunnel like anything I like they don't have the first round picture in the next two years I'm already watching 2028 quarterbacks I'm just rambling thanks guys I love the show appreciate y 'all first thing I'll say I was living in the Mark Twain dorm during the Bears Colts Super Bowl and the fact that he was too young to remember it It just makes me feel so much closer to death, which is that's very funny and sad for me.

55:44I wish I had something to say to make our guy feel better here. My stance on this is if there is a silver lining, it's that there are very few offensive coaches and offensive staffs that can get an offense to the place that this one was at for the first half of this season. That is a real thing to feel good about and to put some hope into. Because in this league right now, having one of those guys is so hugely important and valuable that I think you should feel pretty good that I still believe Shane Steichen is one of those guys. That being said, I'm not sure where else I would turn after that if I wanted to feel good about what the 2026 and 2027 Indianapolis Colts were going to look like.

56:36It's I want to start by saying my relation factor to this caller is that Andrew Luck retiring is also one of the worst days of my life. That was like I loved that man. So that was terrible. I think for me, it's like it's the way he says that this was always going to happen, that Daniel Jones, it would be fun and then ultimately it would come crashing down. I think that was true. But I think the way that the trajectory we were on was like they run into Houston, maybe in the wild card and Daniel Hunter just ripped someone's head off and they lose the game. I think you could live with that, though.

57:08If you're like an 11 win Colts team, you get to the playoffs and you just run into one of the best defenses in the league and they beat you. It's like that happens. That sucks, but it happens. Maybe we can regroup for next year. Daniel Jones will be healthy. We'll be good. I think the fact that it's unraveled the way it has, where the player you spent two first strong picks for is hurt and not really elevating your defense the way that you wanted him to obviously Buckner has missed some time Daniel Jones now is hurt and again it's not even just that Jones is hurt now you don't get to see what AR would look like in a better version of the offense I'm not going to explain away any of the way that Anthony Richardson played in 2024 2023 or whatever but this version of the offense is the best that we've ever seen it with the way that Pierce is playing Warren being in it so the fact that we don't get to see Richardson in it is complicating and now even for this week I don't know if Riley Leonard is going to play and so they're going to be down to like Brett Rippin or something like that.

57:57And so after having your season, you just got pushed out of the playoffs officially, still technically by the percentages have an OK chance. But now that is being staked on Brett Rippin without all of your best defensive players on the other side of the ball. It's I don't remember the last time a team has had this much whiplash within like six weeks of one season. Like this is ridiculous. this? I still, and maybe I'm just delusional. I'm still at a place where if Daniel Jones were healthy and maybe that's another consideration because he is somebody that has consistently been hurt. Well, he's also consistently been hurt over the last few years.

58:35This isn't a new thing. If Dan and I, and we can talk about how the Achilles changes this conversation, but if Daniel Jones were healthy, I still think and healthy going into next year, I still feel like you land in a decent place if you're the Colts. Like you land in the best possible place you could have after missing on Anthony Richardson. Like even if with Daniel Jones, you were probably going to settle as like a back half of the top 10 sort of offense over the course of the season when things fell back to earth a little bit, there's nothing wrong with that. Like we're in a place where if you have enough other stuff within your offense, there are not 32 elite quarterbacks.

59:16like you were going to pay Daniel Jones, the Sam Darnold contract or whatever that thing was going to look like. You were going to surround him with, I still think one of the best groups of pass catchers in the league, a very good offensive coordinator, a very good running back. And I still them like them struggling over the last month or so. I think some of it is fluky. And I think some of it is him being hurt. Like, I think they probably would have been fine if the Achilles thing doesn't happen because now it puts you in a place where what are they going to do at quarterback next year. Like, are we going to be in a situation where Anthony Richardson kind of has to play in the early part of the season?

59:53Cause Daniel Jones isn't healthy and maybe Jones just is never healthy for the 2026 season. What does that do to the contract that you're going to be able to offer him? That's where this truly becomes an issue. Like I think them tethering themselves to Daniel Jones by trading away those two first round picks and boxing them in there's downside to that. and we were going to realize that path most likely. But if he was going to be healthy next year, I still think that's a path that I can live with based on all of the different ways this could have gone. Now, the fact that 2026 is kind of in question in terms of that model all falling together, that's where things get depressing as shit.

1:00:30Yeah, the fact that you haven't paid him yet and now you don't know if he's, yeah, you don't know if he's going to play for you next year. So either, like you said, you're back to betting on Anthony Richardson, which at this stage, especially given we haven't seen him this year and he was again somehow breaking his own face this year. It's like there's just a lot of weird stuff going on there. And then like if you don't want to do the Anthony Richardson thing and you're completely over that, you've got to bring in someone to step in for Daniel Jones for eight, ten weeks before he fully comes back from this Achilles.

1:00:58And then even then, you don't know what he's going to look like after that. So it's like this really does weirdly set them on like a 2027 timeline almost, which by that point, it's like I feel like trying to evaluate what any team is going to be two years out. There's no way you can't. You have no idea that this league moves way too fast to be doing any of that. And especially when they're not going to have first round picks to reload over that, over that stretch. There's a real chance that if you want to get the most out of this, depending on what your faith level still is in Anthony Richardson, that you'll have to go out and trade for some sort of quarterback next year, whether that's Mac Jones, whether that's Geno Smith, like something like that.

1:01:37If you don't think that Daniel Jones is going to be healthy enough for you to maximize next season, there's a chance that you have to try to do this again. And my God, can you imagine any darker path for a Colts fan that's had to do this pretty much every single year since Andrew Luck retired, having to go back into the pool yet again, because you're not in a position to draft the guy. I kind of forgot that element of it that they've truly been on we joke about the quarterback carousel a lot but they've been on it more than anyone since since Andrew Luck retired that's that part of it is crazy when you thought you finally kind of solved it now here we are again solved it at least in your own way to some right exactly in your own way you solved it in your own way you got to a very to an acceptable place with this entire thing and now the Achilles thing kind of rips it away from you and that's where the Colts are right now and so I'll bring it back to saying I think that the silver lining is it is very hard to find high quality offensive ecosystems in the NFL and they are extremely valuable when you find one I do think this is one of those other than that I think that there's a lot of reasons to be very depressed if you are a fan right now all right let's get one more let's get out of here all right let me give you a little context for this one so this is a Falcons fan he unfortunately didn't leave his name but he called us once, left an angry voicemail, then he heard Raheem Morris' press conference after the game and was compelled to call back.

1:03:07So now, with that in mind, let's hear this thing. Hey, it's me again, calling about the Sockers. I'm sorry. I can't just leave that last voicemail while I got left. I'm honestly pissed off. Every time I read quotes from this man, we got to find a way. Bro, you found a way to get six points. You played your best for two and a half quarters. I can't. This team shows itself every time they get on the field that it's okay for a quarter. After that first quarter, we don't have any backup plans. You run the same play three different times in three different variations. I'm a casual football player. I can see what you're doing before they do it.

1:03:54I'm pretty sure you're a professional person and tell what you're doing without them seeing what you're doing because you're doing the same shit. I'm sorry. I just had expressed myself. I had to let you know how I really felt. I tried to keep it contained. The last words made. I tried to be nice, but I can't be nice no more after reading all these quotes. I gotta lay it out. Get rid of everybody from the top down. It's a torture. It's a cancer. It's been brooding here since 2016. this need of winning right away when you know you can't. That's not how the NFL works. That's not how Ross the building works.

1:04:33That's how franchise building works. They try to keep finding this golden ticket like they're going to get. Everybody's like, well, what the f*** were they doing from Atlanta? What were they doing in Atlanta? You want to know what they were doing in Atlanta? That's shit. Okay, I'll stop running now. Yeah, I'll have a good one. That's one of my favorites that we've gotten all year. It's really good. You can hear his blood pressure rising through the entire thing. That was incredible. What do you think is the answer here? Like, what do you think is the right path forward for this person trying to come to terms with what the Falcons are?

1:05:08I don't know, because I think that you can make a case that this is the most frustrating season of Falcons football in like a decade. because obviously for let's say everything after 28 to 3 because after that they were still a decent team you had the end of the matt ryan year blah blah in 2020 they only won four games but that was also like yeah matt ryan they were tearing it down that was the whole point they were tearing it down matt ryan was pretty much done by then all right let's move on you can you can compartmentalize that frustrated it sucks to win four games but you can compartmentalize that this team was supposed to win the division like that was what at least competes for the division but they sold in the building and and like what they were telling people the way they thought that they could do this they thought that they could be like a top 10 to 12 offense we would have a defense that could maybe get after the quarterback a little bit we could generate some negative plays we could go in the division and the fact that i think it's more frustrating that the defense kind of was what you wanted it to be like they are still you can run the ball on them they've got some issues but the pass rush is pretty good when they can get into those scenarios and they've got some nice young DBs.

1:06:15So the fact that weirdly the defense is not what failed the Atlanta Falcons and it's instead the offense, whether it's the offensive line, taking a little bit of a step back, the play calling feeling a little bit more stale, some injuries to receiver. Obviously, London's missing some time. Darnell Mooney was never healthy this year and they kind of tried to pretend that he was, which was another bizarre thing. And then and then just the play calling, I think, is not taking the step that we wanted. So it's just like all of these things. And then the quarterback, Michael Penix, I don't think is offensive, but I think we thought he could take a step in year two and has kind of just been the same guy that we saw from the last four or five weeks of last year.

1:06:49It's it's this is another situation where the injury complicates things a little bit because you could at least let's say he had been what he was for the first half of the season in the second half of the season. You can be frustrated with a lack of development. You can be a little bit disappointed that he's kind of the same guy he was and that we haven't really seen the step forward that you would hope to see. But going into next year, you know let's say they reset things let's say they bring in a new staff i think that there's enough there with the quality of the offensive line the quality of the run game you go out maybe try to bring in another pass catcher i think there's enough to build on with the offense where you could talk yourself into him being if not a great solution then the offense being better than it was this year i do think that's possible but now he's going to be rehabbing again so now when's he going to be back is it a new staff that he's going to be back with it just puts you in a really strange spot.

1:07:40But I'm, I think the, he said a lot of funny things, the caller. I think the best thing he said was, this is a team that keeps trying to fix things immediately. They keep trying to have these quick fixes to every single problem. I think that if you, what the coaching staff is what it is. I don't know what they're going to do with the coaching staff. Cause two years is not a long leash for a coaching staff, despite how bad this has gotten the front office. This is probably over, right? Like, I just don't understand how you can make a compelling argument about why this team building plan should be back when you consider how scattered and how short-sighted so much of it had been.

1:08:20I think there are enough young building block pieces on this team where if you ascribe like a normal sort of process to how they should build out the rest of the roster, there's enough here to work with. I just don't know what you do with the coaching staff in that instance. Like it just feels like it'd probably be easier to start over again and just have a clean break and see whatever the next phase that this can look like. It probably would, because I think we talked about that when we did the giant section, when that, when on this, on the hangover, when they fired Brian Dable, it's like, do you like keep anybody?

1:08:52Do you like, I I'm still of the school of thought that like, for the most part, I would like to clean out the GM and the head coach at the same time, even if that probably is unfair to this coaching staff. Like, I don't think they're offensively bad. Like I think Olberk has done a really good job this year. I think Zach Robinson this year has been a little bit less impressive, but I think based on how it looked last year, I think there's still something to build on there. And so like, maybe they're getting the short end of the stick there, but I don't know. I'm usually at a point where I would like to keep everything pretty in unison in locks up.

1:09:21I think the frustration with that mindset is exactly where I would land if I were a fan of this team and they've could try to do it consistently. They try to do it with the cousins thing that I I think that one of my through lines with leadership that consistently falls short in the NFL is that they think there are quick solutions and easy solutions to things where there is this mindset of, well, if we fix X, that was the problem last year. That's all we need to worry about because everything else is going to be fine. Everything else is going to be just as good as we wanted it to be. This brings me back to the way that this team approached the offseason.

1:10:02The idea that they added no offensive players this offseason, not a single one, because this was all about how can we make sure the pass rush is better? How can we make sure the pass rush is better? And it doesn't matter that the pass rush is better because your offense has stagnated and atrophied a little bit because you built in no contingencies to what the offense was supposed to be. And so I think the teams that operate this way, you're always going to run into issues because it just shows a lack of awareness and vision. And I think that has too often happened with this regime specifically.

1:10:37It's so tunnel vision. That's the best way to put it. Like, it's cool. You fix the pass rush on the reps where the pass rush gets to matter. But if you can't defend the run and you are constantly behind the scoreboard because your offense is not doing what you want it to do, what does it matter if you can get after the quarterback? Like, nobody is going to be afraid of you. Like I again, they are they do a lot of this regime does a lot of like double dipping on problems very quickly to like try to get out ahead of it. They did it with the quarterback. They did it with the pass rushers and it's just left them kind of waiting.

1:11:07Like out of those four moves, the two quarterbacks and the two pass rushers, I would say Jalen Walker is the only one that has like definitively worked out for them. And even that, like I think he's a nice player. I don't think he's been like an elite difference making player. It's sort of yet. yeah and james pierce has a lot of sacks but i think for what you paid for him he just like he can't he can't be out there on first down like that to me is a problem there's there's a lot to be worried about with this team and i'm sure we'll spend plenty of time talking about it before now in the end of the season for now that is all we've got on the week 14 hangover uh we will be recapping the monday night game tonight on our youtube channel so encourage you guys to check that out we get another good one chargers and eagles and then we'll be back with our regularly schedule programming for the rest of the week.

1:11:50For now, that's all we got. Appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you very soon.