Week 5 recap: The Buccaneers and Seahawks put on a show, the Broncos take down the Eagles, and the Ravens hunt for the panic button

0:03Welcome to the athletic football show week five is in the books man it was a good one little bit of a sleepy start with the early slate had a couple games that were out of hand pretty quickly but the afternoon and Sunday night games more than made up for it we touched a little bit on the Sunday night game me Dave Hellman Derek Klassen we're going to dig into the Sunday night game in earnest on the hangover show tomorrow but we had to talk a little bit about that Drake May performance moved on to a wild Bucks Seahawks game that was everything you could have hoped for for Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold talked about the Commanders and the Broncos grabbing our attention spent a little time on what is ailing the Philadelphia Eagles offense, got to a bevy of WTF moments from week five, the Jets and Raiders being just worse than they're supposed to be under new regimes.

0:53We thought we might be a little bit more of adults in the room. The Cardinals lose the most ridiculous game of the season in the most ridiculous possible way. Spent a lot of time on that, had a good time. Then we spent a little bit of time talking about our romantic moments from week five. I've really enjoyed this one. Hope you guys do as well. Let's get to it with me, Dave, and Derek right now.

1:18Every NFL Sunday kind of takes on a life of its own. It has rhythms and ebbs and flows to it. And we talked a little bit about this before we started recording, Dave, but it was a sleepy early slate. We're always figuring out what to put on the TVs, and we kicked off multiple games in like the third quarter because we needed to give more airtime to Saints Giants. Like that's the type of early morning slate that it was. But the late slate and the Sunday night game did everything in their power to redeem the day for week five. And I would say they succeeded. We're going to find somewhere to get our wattage.

1:52And yeah, it was everything from, I mean, we're in central time. So from about three o 'clock onward, just nonstop entertainment. And that's not like the early window wasn't a complete bust, by the way. Like we'll get to talk about. We'll get to Eagles, Broncos. But yeah, man, I mean, from the afternoon on, just a nonstop thrill ride, which ended 15 minutes ago with some Drake May heroics. We're going to talk more at length about the Sunday night game on the Hangover show tomorrow, but I absolutely did want to hit the game in some capacity at the top of the show. We talked a little bit about this during the preview show this week, Derek.

2:29This was a showcase for Drake May to potentially show America, show a national football audience what he had been doing under the cloud of darkness that is the 1 p.m. Eastern kickoffs. And I would say he made good on that opportunity. That went about as well as it could, like even for as much as I am the Drake May guy on this show, I don't know if I thought it would be quite like conducting a game winning drive against maybe the best team in football, the way that he did. He just this to me was, I think, a very good display of what you get in terms of the high floor stuff with him where he's consistently making the right decisions when he was under pressure he was doing a good job of either minimizing sacks or getting the ball out either to a player or just throwing it away if he had to he had two or three really good throwaways in this game that he made work for him obviously he can scramble which we saw a little bit in this game and then all the throws that he's able to make down the field like the one that he he throws a little bit of like a late shot over the middle in the second half in between a couple defenders he obviously hits the whole shot to digs on the last drive he had a deep over out to the left side a little bit earlier in the game like just his blend of I can make everyone else around me better because I'm not the one messing up on top of being able to make the oh my god Josh Allen type of throws is just it's a really special blend and he's still gonna have to do a little bit more of maturing and making sure that he can do games like this consistently but I just it's a special combo and we saw it tonight.

3:57The combo, I think, is a good way to frame it because there just aren't that many quarterbacks in the league who have this blend of just physical kind of like force of nature ability in these moments. You saw it on that final drive. Him shaking off Daquan Jones to avoid that sack ends up becoming a huge play in the game. And there just aren't that many quarterbacks physically built in a way that they would be able to do something like that. And then you combine that with some of the off-schedule playmaking that he can bring to the table. I mean, that scramble drill completion to Stefan Diggs is one of the plays of the day.

4:29And it feels like that is always on the table for him. And when you combine that, like Derek just said, with the high floor stuff that we're starting to see, I do think that this game in this moment was kind of a proper reflection of what Drake May has been over the first month. How fun is it that he did it in Orchard Park against Josh Allen, which like he has that rare ability, but he played the buttoned up style that took Josh Allen a little while to learn. And I'm sure Drake May's growing pains aren't over. He's certainly not a finished product, but to play, to display that ability and just the natural athleticism that a guy like him has and also played like a seasoned vet at times in this game and make smart plays.

5:13Yeah. I thought it was really fitting that he did it against Josh Allen of all guys, which is a guy that he would aspire to try to be as he goes through his career. The other part of this where there's a similarity and kind of a parallel with Josh Allen is that when the Bills had money to spend, they traded for Stefan Diggs. Just get you a Stefan Diggs. Just go get you a Stefan Diggs when you're an ascending young player who needs that type of weapon within the offense. And listen, Stefan Diggs in 2025 is not Stefan Diggs in 2020 or 2021. But Derek, I think he did a pretty damn good job of turning back the clock tonight.

5:46I mean, this was as good of a revenge game as you could possibly ask for if you're Stefan Diggs. It really was. I think it was a combination of one. I think he, you know, some receivers are fueled by spite and that would not surprise me with Stefan Diggs. Yeah. You know, you think he seems like that kind of guy? He does, you know, getting traded a couple of times. I think he seems a little bit like that kind of guy. And so to do it, especially in that stadium, I think was really, really cool. And then also I think if we've just watched the Patriots over the last couple of months or over the first month of the season, the chemistry between those two has really started to build.

6:15Like they've gotten a little bit better about like finding where is that soft spot in the zone where do you like the ball how do I get it to you what's the timing of this and so for it to all come together in a moment like this in a game like this in that in that stadium it's just some really cool stuff we'll talk more about that game tomorrow on the hangover really dig into kind of the down to down how it actually went and do some more examination of it but definitely wanted to hit it in some way here at the top of the show let's get into before the Sunday night game what was the most entertaining game of the Sunday slate.

6:46The Bucs win an absolute thriller over the Seahawks 38-35. I think there are a couple different ways we could get into this game. Here's how I'm going to choose to do it. There were nine touchdowns in this game and 10 incompletions. That's what this thing felt like, where we're just throwing haymakers back and forth. There was a moment, I'm trying to remember exactly when it happened. I think it was maybe like the big Abuka catch that got inside the five or maybe one of the five or six big abuka catches where you're just sitting there at the desk next to me, just laughing, just like chuckling at what this game was starting to look like.

7:23That's the type of performance we got from Bucs Seahawks today. I was having the time of my life in the second window, man. It was honestly, it was like watching a game of horse. And that's like, that's obviously, it's reducing the efforts of a lot of football players. There's 22 guys on the field at any given time, but it just felt like Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold were trading trick shots. There's like, all right, you hit it from behind the backboard. I can do that. Can you do the reverse running layup? Can you hit it from the logo like Steph Curry? And every time the other guy was like, yeah, hell yeah, I can.

7:56And I mean, look, we saw a crazy game last week, the tie between the Packers and the Cowboys. Like there will be some, there will be games like this where there's 70 something combined points and however many yards of offense. but the explosiveness in this game combined with the cleanness of it. Incredible. Like 10 completions on the day in a game where both teams scored 35 plus points. Like, I don't think we'll see that combination again this season of how efficient these teams were on top of how explosive they were. I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that. Like a game this high scoring where there were so few mistakes.

8:36And I know Sam Darnold threw the pick at the end that kind of decided it, But both of these guys were just dialed in from the opening kickoff until the final minute of regulation. I think all you really need to know is what it felt like when the Seahawks got that sack after tying the game at 28. When they got that sack to torpedo that Bucs drive, it felt like that was all they needed to win the game based on how everything else had gone. And then obviously that unfortunate moment at the end where Sam Darnold deflects that ball off of a helmet and then it gets picked off and the game is over. But that's what it came down to.

9:06It was one or two mistakes. If the if an offense made a mistake in the second half, it felt like that team was going to lose the game. And so that sack that the Seahawks or the Bucks took felt like a game swinging play until that interception at the end. Derek, when you're kind of taking a step back and thinking about what you saw from Bucks Seahawks today, what is your biggest takeaway about this game, whether it was what happened on Sunday or what you think it means moving forward? I mean, this to me, just watching there can be a lot of games where 38, 35, I just feel like I watched a lot of disgusting defense where like the week one Steelers Jets game.

9:38That was just a lot of bad defense like that. It just wasn't good. It was fun at the moment, though, man. It sure was so good. But watching this, I was came away more amazed at just like how well these offenses were put together and how well both of these quarterbacks played. Like both of these guys were incredibly accurate today. And I think both teams did had some really smart stuff. And then you combine that with just the talent on some of these players. It's just incredible. Like for the Seahawks, I came into this game wanting them to run the ball towards the outside. And they did a really good job of that, specifically running at Zion McCollum, like a number of Kenneth Walker's big runs, including the first one was just an outside zone run at Zion McCollum.

10:16He's a little bit late and soft to fit into into his run responsibility and the play is able to pop. And so they did a good job understanding how to attack them in that way. Darnold makes a number of insane throws in this game. Like what was funny is I think I can't remember if it was two or three weeks ago, but Herbert had made that throw in the red zone to Keenan Allen, where he slides up in the pocket, rolls a little bit to his left and then guy in his face kind of crowding his his throwing platform makes this throw moving to his left and pins it for a touchdown. The Sam Darnold touchdown in this game to Torrey Horton was kind of that.

10:46It wasn't exactly the same, but it was pretty close. And then on the flip side, I thought the Bucks just did a really good job of kind of manipulating some of the Seahawks safety. specifically they got into a lot of three by one stuff and forced all the coverage over to one side and then they hit they would hit the back side especially to a book on a number of times so i just thought both teams came into this with a really good game plan and both quarterbacks were on an absolute heater i mean the first seahawks touchdown drive i mean donald just throwing darts like the third and six completion a cup on that drive is just a beautiful throw where he can only put it in one specific spot a royal bullies levante david and man coverage he rips one to aj Barner.

11:24And then the touchdown to JSN is just like a beautiful little design where he's in the backfield. They motion him out. They get a little zone tell and the placement and the timing on that throw. I mean, when Donald right now, I mean, we talked about this a little bit in the preview show, but the accuracy is just staggering. Like he's just putting the ball wherever he wants to all the time. And that includes throws down the field. I mean, that huge chunk to JSN, these are like long handoffs at this point. And so I just have such a great time watching the offense, whether it's what he's doing as a thrower, the placement, the timing, the accuracy, the aggressiveness, some of the designs, the way they're building space into the offense.

12:04There are a bunch of examples of that in this game. And then they're receiving talent. Like you're seeing Arroyo emerge a little bit. You understand what Barner is supposed to be within the offense. And JSN is just an absolute maniac. And the fact that there was somebody on the other side that was willing to go shot for shot for him the entire game from the same school. It's just there's so many little tiny layers to this game. It just made it so enjoyable. This is a game where like you can come out of this game with five insane sounding takes that don't feel insane having watched it. Well, I mean, OK, let's start where you just said that.

12:39I think I think it was you that said in the preview show, JSN's making a case as like a top 10 receiver. I don't think it's a case. I think it's undeniable at this point. Where do you put Emeka Ibuka? I still need to probably see it a little bit more. I agree, but I mean, how many guys do you see have starts like this? Even with all of the young, amazing receivers that have come into the league with their hair on fire, Ibuka is right there with any of them over the last five or six years of the CeeDee Lambs and the Justin Jeffersons and the Jamar Chase. He's absolutely incredible. I mean, we could have a whole segment on a podcast about how well Darnold is playing in what I still think is a lesser environment than Minnesota last year.

13:26And like, when do you revisit the decision by the Vikings to let that play out the way that it did? I think I would call Baker Mayfield my front runner for MVP through five games, which it's only five games. We don't cast ballots for that, but I just don't think I ever thought I would be in a situation where I thought that was true. But we just watched this game that like I come out of this with so many crazy opinions because so many guys played out of their skulls in this in this one game. It was incredible. Baker continues to just do ridiculous things when asked off schedule and in some of these playmaking moments.

14:03I mean, that the drive to tie the game at 35, he the extension to find Sterling Shepard in the left side in the left corner of the end zone. I mean, he's just doing that consistently. And even the play he hits to Otten on the right side, like he has to extend and create and make that play out of thin air. And when you combine that, Derek, like his playmaking ability with the fact that this team still in structure is capable of. I thought they did such a good job today. And I don't think there was any like egregious mistakes by the Seahawks defense. But when you have so many backups in there, when Darian Kendrick is in there, when Okada is in there, I just thought that the Bucks did a phenomenal job of circling those guys in the biggest moments of the game.

14:46Like the big 50 plus yard completion to Ibuka, it's a little bit of a he sells the out route just with like a little shake and then bends it back inside. And Okada is the safety to that side. and he's cheating a little bit further toward the middle of the field than he probably should. The completion right before that on that drive, Abuka is threatening vertically off of play action and Okada probably gets a little bit too much depth. Again, these aren't egregious mistakes, but I just felt like the Bucs did such a good job of picking on those guys when those opportunities were available. So you combine all the in-structure stuff that's really well thought out, well-timed with all of these things that Baker is able to do off schedule And I think that's how you get the feel of what this Bucks offense has been, even while banged up over the first five games of the year.

15:29Yeah. And Baker's like, he's, he's doing everything this offense needs of him. Like he is, especially in a game like this, where you have so many backups and you're calling so many really good plays to kind of target a lot of those guys and obviously have the receiver talent to do it. The willingness for him to throw downfield the way that he does, like anywhere past 15 yards, especially to me outside of the numbers, it's just like, it's, it's some of the best stuff in the NFL. Like when he's on time throwing outside of the numbers or down the field, it looks really, really good. And then we've talked about it before.

15:57The biggest change in it, like he could do some of that stuff earlier in his career. The biggest change is what he can do off schedule. And to me, it's that he has an internal clock now. Like young Baker did not have an internal clock for like, when is the play over? When do I need to get out of the pocket? When is it time to scramble? It's so much better now. And he's like athletically not as scary as guys like Josh Allen or Jaden Daniels or Drake Mayer, whoever as a scrambler but in terms of knowing when to pull the rip cord he's about as good as anybody in the league and he's good enough athletically to make good on that so like he's just it's it's amazing that he has such a good plan b now in a way that even when he first got to tampa he really did not have to your first point derek baker was nine of 11 for 227 and two touchdowns when he threw 10 plus yards down the field today just unbelievable levels of efficiency really from both of these guys.

16:51And I do, I, I hate that it ended that way for Darnold and like, whatever football's a weird sport where the ball bounces off of a helmet and 35 year old Levante David makes one of the plays of the day after a slip missing a tackle. I think it was on Arroyo or Barner earlier in the game that led to a touchdown. So funny how, you know, the bounces of the ball come back at you and you get to be a hero. I don't really, I don't know. I don't blame Darnold for that. I thought we talked about it in the preview show, though. Darnold hasn't always been great against pressure this season. He he played well against pressure today.

17:28And like Todd Bowles tried. But then that's the funny thing about football against the blitz. He was 10 of 12 for 135. And then the final blitz led to the interception that won the Bucks the game. And that's all it takes sometimes. And what Derek was just saying about Baker Mayfield, Baker Mayfield early in his career, really struggled when pressured. He just didn't have that internal clock. And you really felt because he wasn't pulling the ripcord quick enough, his physical limitations would start to show up. And I think now because he has a better field, there are a bunch of examples in this game, but the first time he was pressured in this game, I think it was a blitz coming off like his right side.

18:03And then Shenanue also gets some penetration and he feels it immediately and escapes to his right and has a successful scramble. But even as a passer today, and this is what we talked about coming into the year, what elements of the 2024 Bucs could carry over in some of those more volatile situations. Baker was one of the best quarterbacks in the league when pressured last season. Today, 8 of 9, 130 yards and a touchdown, 14 and a half yards per attempt when pressured per next-gen stats. And the other element, I think just a couple more specifics that stuck out in this game. One of the other things that carried over today specifically, the screen game for the Bucs came up in some really big moments.

18:38The touchdown drive they had after the Milrow fumble, they had a 17-yard gain to Otten on a 3rd and 14 screen. It was a fantastic effort by Haggard, who was like sticking with Leonard Williams for about 10 yards down the field. And then they had another screen to Rashad White on second and four for about nine yards. Touchdown on a little pin pull on the next play where they pick on Darian Kendrick in space. And it's 13-0. And so that 13-0 start, that's ultimately what prevented the Seahawks from getting over the hump in this game. We think of this as some clean, machine-like effort from both of these offenses.

19:09the Seahawks didn't score until the end of the second half or end of the second quarter because of some of their miscues early they had two penalties on their first two drives that crushed those drives Zabel had a hold on the first one they end up missing a field goal and I think on the second one they had a completion on third and 12 to Kenneth Walker that would have been a first down it's an eligible receiver downfield and then Milrow fumbles on that pitch and so they go into a 13 nothing hole forgot about the Milrow snap that was it like those three drives and fumbling literally and figuratively on those three drives ultimately puts them in a big enough hole where they can play a perfect game until that final interception and still not win and so I walk away from this game thinking when the Seahawks get healthy on defense and if they can avoid a couple costly mistakes I mean this is a really scary team and the Bucs continue to be a really scary team even with everything that they've endured over the first month of the season And yeah, and not to the Seahawks were beat up by the end of this game.

20:09I mean, they lose Reek Wollin. Eman Worry gets hurt again in the first game that he comes back. The replacement, Nehemiah Pritchett spent some time out. So like, I hear you Seahawks fans if that's driving you crazy. But the Buccaneers didn't have Jamel Dean or Benjamin Morrison for this game. And obviously we know what they're dealing with on the offensive side of the ball. No Mike Evans? No Mike Evans. There's still plenty of guys out in this game. I do want to highlight, too, Rashad White's two touchdowns in the red zone. The Bucs got down there and they were like, just follow Tristan Wirfs to pay dirt.

20:42And as somebody who deeply loves watching Tristan Wirfs, I was like, this is why I was high on this offense. If he's healthy, if he's here. The funniest part is it was Tristan Wirfs on some of those perimeter runs for the Bucs. The most important blocker on the perimeter runs for the Seahawks was Cooper Cup. Cooper Cup was phenomenal on those two 20-yard Kenneth Walker runs in this game. And so we could spend an hour talking about this. There's so many little nuggets and little details from this one. But I think the big picture takeaway from this game is, one, that uniform combination is the best thing we can get in an NFL field.

21:15I think that added to the overall intrigue of this. And two, I think both of these teams, as we think about an NFC that feels a little bit muddled, right? Like, I still think Detroit's really good. Obviously, the Eagles lost today, but they're a very good team. But that second tier of the NFC coming into the year, I felt like it was going to be a little bit murky and a little bit up for grabs. And I think both of these teams are very much in the conversation for who can kind of take hold of that. All right, before we move on, let's take a quick break.

21:49Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. Now you have my attention. We talked about this on the preview show. Me and you, Dave, we're curious what we'd be saying about the Broncos and the Eagles coming out of week five, given the seasons that those teams had had up to this point. What are you saying about the Eagles after that game against the Broncos, who I think after this week have our attention? I mean, I don't want to take any credit away from a phenomenal performance from Denver, but I said I wanted to know about the what I wanted to know what they'd be saying about the Eagles. And I did the toxicity that's going to be radiating off of this offensive performance by Philadelphia.

22:30It's going to fuel the news cycle for I mean, they fueled the news cycle for a full week with A.J. Brown and Devante Smith being aggravated after a four game winning streak. How do you think it's going to be after this? And my biggest takeaway from the entire thing was you've had a y 'all have had like a Madden dynasty at some point, right? or like yeah at some point in my life yes you know how you you call your games for your video game team where you're trying to like make sure everybody's getting their stats of course the eagles do that in real life the eagles call that call it that way in real life i i it is wild watching the philadelphia eagles try to you can see them trying to make everybody happy in the flow of a game where it's like, well, we got it.

23:17Like, let's, let's, let's get this AJ target in here. Let's, let's call up this play. That's going to, that's going to open it up for Devante. And like, of course you want to get all these guys involved, but it feels so intentional, which is bad. Like there's, there's no rhythm to it. There's no flow to it. And of course they threw the ball 38 times and Saquon Barkley carried the ball six times. And you, I mean, you can talk to me all day about how great the Broncos defense is and how they've shut things down and made things hard to where the Eagles needed to throw. How would you know? They had nine designed runs in this game, Robert.

23:54They are the only team of the week that did not call 10 run plays. Even the Bengals who were playing catch up on the Lions all day long had double digit design runs. The Eagles had nine, six for Saquon Barkley. You know how many designed runs they had for Jalen Hurts in this game? Donut, big old zero. He had two attempts, a kneel down and a scramble in the third quarter. I mean, completely. And look, I get it. You do need to focus on your star receivers and get them involved and open up the passing game. But at the expense of the identity that won you a Super Bowl, does that sound smart to you?

24:37the Eagles in this game in the second half had a 27 and a half percent success rate per true media, 27 and a half percent. Derek, as you're looking at what ailed the offense again in the second half of this game and trying to combine that with where the Broncos deserve credit and what the Broncos might've been doing, what does that look like to you, that marriage? Yeah. So for me, it's only giving Saquon Barkley one carry is kind of crazy. That to me, I don't love I think another part of it to me is that so what we saw a lot in it actually what we've seen in a lot of Philadelphia Eagles this game is that defenses play them very differently in the second half than they do the first half and with the Bucks recently it was we're going to run a lot of these zone blitzes and we're going to bring the bodies and we're going to see if you can replace it cool they did in the second half of that game it was a lot of sim pressures where they're not actually bringing that many players and they're maybe bringing four maybe one guys from a weird spot and that really got to them in this game that the Broncos kind of started with a similar approach but it was a lot more man coverage because that's obviously what they do and they were like hey you know what we're gonna make you win your one-on-ones and we're gonna make you make these throws and they weren't like killing them but they were making enough of those throws that it was like okay if we keep doing this we're gonna lose the game and so in the second half Denver did a really good job of showing a lot of pressure putting like six seven guys on the line and dropping all of them out for all of these sim pressures and what a lot of the time they kept doing is they kept double mugging the a gap so putting a player on either side of the center dropping both of them out and then bringing the nickel off the edge and philly just did not protect it well jalen hurts did not see it and replace it well and i think that that led to like a really big spiral where they really struggled to find plays in the second half because of that i think the bring hufanga in these kind of isolated moments right off the edge and some of those simulated pressures worked twice in torpedoing plays in the second half for Philadelphia.

26:28And I think that's exactly what you're saying, where it's not these big pressures, but you're still bringing guys from unconventional spots. And what they were doing in the first half is the linebackers were coming a decent amount. They were vacating that space. And for the second week in a row, the Eagles were actually pretty good in those moments where they were having to replace blitzes. Like it's funny because for years, Jalen Hurts' biggest issues were often against the blitz. And And then over the last two weeks specifically, that hasn't been in the case whatsoever. He was good again today.

26:57It's been kind of crazy. So today, against the Blitz, Jalen Hurts finished 13 of 14 for 137 yards per NextGenStats. Over the past two weeks, these numbers are pretty crazy. When Hurts has been blitzed over the last two weeks, he is 21 of 24 for 196 yards and four touchdowns. is an 87.5 % completion rate, 70.4 % success rate. And the one that actually jumps out to me, 5.3 air yards per attempt on those plays. When he hasn't been blitzed, Derek, over the last two weeks, 17 of 38 for 214 yards, 44.5 % completions, 26.5 % success rate, 11.8 air yards per target. when they're not replacing blitzes on quick throws over the intermediate area of the field, the offense is essentially, let me see if I can just chuck the ball downfield and we can make a play.

27:54And when that's not happening, you just feel how inconsistent and stop and start this offense is right now. There's no engine of it. If you're not going to be able to run the ball and you're not committed to running the ball, and all you really have is these shot plays down the field every once in a while, it's going to be stop and start. There's going to be no consistency to this thing. And that is what it feels like right now. And that's the thing. A lot of them aren't even like design shot plays. It's like you're saying, he's seeing these blitz look. It doesn't turn into a blitz look. So now he can't replace it the way he wants.

28:24And you kind of see him freeze and go, OK, I'm going to bail outside of the pocket a little bit. You saw it in this game. He had a deep one to Dallas Goddard. He tried to do this with multiple times to Jahan Dotson that he was like late in the play, just kind of chucking it up there and see if he can get it. And every now and then he's accurate enough to do that. But that is no way to live. Like you said, they don't have a what is our go to right now? And in this game, they did have a little bit in the first half, other than obviously some of their outside vertical shots through a lot of those slide routes that they really like, especially to Dallas Goddard.

28:54But again, in the second half, once Denver started playing a little bit more zone and they weren't just having to run with guys across the formation, some of that stuff just went away. And so they weren't able to tap into that and move the balls consistently. and then you end up in more of those third and eights where they can bring some of the, you know, some of this funky stuff that they were doing. They were picking on the linebackers in a bunch of different ways. The Eagles were over the first, you know, two and a half quarters of this game. Obviously the double move from Saquon Barkley is taking advantage of the linebackers in space, all the play action, all the slide routes, all the crossers against man.

29:24They were really picking on those guys and eventually they both stopped blitzing and they stopped putting those guys in man coverage. Still want to give the Broncos a lot of credit for coming back and winning this game. And I honestly think the player at the forefront of that, Cortland Sutton was insane in the second half of this game. And a week removed from Quinion Mitchell having maybe one of the best games we've seen from a cornerback the entire year, Cortland Sutton gets the best of him for like a huge chunk of this game. Per NextGen, and you watched it all day, when Quinion Mitchell was the closest defender in coverage, Cortland Sutton had five catches for 77 yards on seven targets.

30:04a week removed from Quinion Mitchell just completely blanking the Bucs. And that's with him beating him one time on a go ball on like the first drive and dropping it. And he, I mean, a lot of like contested plays, back shoulder, that sluggo that Knicks just puts up to him. And so I think that Corwin Sutton in these contested catch situations where you're just kind of throwing him 50-50 balls and really trusting him in those one-on-one moments. And then Evan Ingram in space combined with some of the defensive adjustments we saw in the second half, that was enough for the Broncos in this game. Like that was enough to get them over the top.

30:3618 points in the fourth quarter. Yeah, that three-play stretch of Knicks hits Sutton on the dig that gets them down in the red zone and then the Ingram catch and run for the touchdown and then the two-point conversion. Like Bo Nix just like blacked out for a second. Just like boom, boom, boom on a day where he, you know, it was stop and start for the Broncos for a lot of this game too, but took advantage of it when they had the opportunity. It was really fun to watch them execute. And Sean Payton saying, screw it, we're on the road. Let's get crazy with it. Let's try to steal this, which obviously, I mean, they got the field goal to make it 21-17, but ultimately didn't need it.

31:16Yeah, and there are a few just really important missteps by the Eagles in the second half of this game. Brett Toth, who comes in for Atlanta Dickerson, has a hold early in the fourth quarter, puts them in first and 20. They had an illegal man downfield that erased a first down with halfway through the fourth quarter. Barkley gets the illegal shift on what would have been a 30 yard gain to Stephonte Smith on that same drive. And then the personal foul on Zach Bond that gives the Broncos a first down on what would have been a fourth down. That's another one where I don't think that's the wrong call.

31:48But again, just these little moments for the Eagles come up big in a very, very close game. I kind of thought it was the wrong call. Like RJ Harvey's like fighting for the sticks with all of his might. I hate those bang bang calls when the guys are kind of already trying to make a hit while the running back is still up. But I can understand why that gets called. Yes, I understand it. I don't like it in that moment. But by the letter of the law, yeah, you're going to see that flag a lot. I think, Derek, our frustrations with the Eagles and where they're at right now, that really hasn't changed after today.

32:19I think just reminded of how just dysfunctional. And again, just like the lack of consistency we see from the offense. Any takeaways from the Broncos with this game? Anything that you saw today that makes you feel a little bit differently, maybe about this team moving forward over the next 10 weeks? I don't know about, you know, differently in terms of like, did they show me something new? But I think for them, proof of concept for how the offense is supposed to work is they're not going to be an elite run game, but they can at least be an average slightly above run game that they want to lean on.

32:48like they ran the ball 30 times in this game with a slightly above average success rate. That's nice. And then Bo Nix had a decent game, but had it in all of the ways that you would think Bo Nix would have a decent game. Like he didn't throw down the field very well, which he struggled with a lot of the season. Again, I know Sutton dropped that one very early in the game, but otherwise I think he struggled to connect there. And then under pressure, he was still bad in this game. He was three of 10 under pressure and took two sacks. But on all of the plays where he was clean, they did a really good job of scheming stuff up for him.

33:16Again, he ripped some of those throws over the middle of the field, hitting Sutton a number of times. Obviously, whenever they can roll him out and boot him out, he's a very, very comfortable thrower on the move. So this to me was just like proof of concept that they can win in the exact way that this team wants to win, where it's like moderate scoring. We work around some of the issues that our quarterback has, lean into his strengths, and we can run the ball and choke this game out. And then like Dave said, you have a head coach who's willing to be a little bit aggressive when he needs to and go put up two extra points on the board in a game like this.

33:44Get to our next one here The Washington Commanders and Jaden Daniels' first game back Have a big win, 27-10 over the Los Angeles Chargers The Washington Commanders offense With Jaden Daniels back in the fold You have my attention Which is funny because it How do I want to describe this? It felt pared down a little bit Like it wasn't, I mean, it clearly wasn't the commanders functioning at full capacity. Jaden is one week off of this injury. Terry McLaurin didn't suit up in this game. You kind of built this thing out of Debo Samuel and Bill Krosky merit. And, but it kicked ass. They had a, they're, they're rushing success rate in this game.

34:2861 % best in the league for the week. Top five rushing performance in the NFL so far this season. Uh, they, yeah, they just, it wasn't, I didn't find it super flashy, but it just worked really well. And Debo Samuel. Yeah. I, another theme for this game that I think is gonna, it's probably gonna come to fruition. And a lot of the commanders wins, if I had to guess, which is the veterans that they have spent resources to acquire showed up in this game, Laramie Tunsil, Debo Samuel, even Marshawn Lattimore, Marshawn Lattimore had a nice day today. One catch for six yards allowed on 41 coverage snaps had the big recovery of the strip of Quentin Johnston as the Chargers are driving toward the red zone, which totally changed that moment in the game.

35:15And yeah, Debo, eight for 96 and a touchdown on a day where you don't have Terry McLaurin. I didn't, I don't know if I expected Debo to be able to carry the commander's receiving core without scary Terry. So it was impressive to see. Derek alluded to this a little bit when it came to the run game when we were previewing this game on Thursday. but I actually think it extends to other elements of Washington's offense against the Chargers defense, Derek, and I probably should have mentioned it in the moment. I think Washington's offense specifically is kind of a bad matchup for the Chargers on a bunch of different levels.

35:46The run game is dangerous, and man, they did so much crazy shit again today. It was awesome. The Bill Merritt direct snap, and you got the guard and the tackle pulling, and there was one play where Jaden reverse pivoted out, and with the running back offset to one side, and you had multiple pours coming that way and Troy died, his head is just exploding for a huge chunk of this game. Like the run game against the Chargers team that doesn't have a lot of heavy bodies and struggles because they play so many light boxes, this Washington run game was always going to be a bad matchup for them and it absolutely was.

36:19But the other element, Derek, that I think probably should have been on my radar coming into the game, we've known this for two years. Washington struggles relatively against man coverage when Jaden Daniels cannot scramble. against zone-based teams, they actually do a very good job of figuring out how to exploit space, and that's how the Chargers want to play. And in this game specifically, I actually think they did a really good job of understanding the Chargers' strengths and how to use them against them. The Chargers do an excellent job of identifying patterns and matching to those patterns in zone coverage.

36:55And what happens when you do that at such a high and kind of proficient clip is you're going to attach to those routes immediately and then you're going to be able to bleed out certain areas of the field because guys are kind of essentially in man coverage in those moments. And that's exactly what happened today. You have all these plays where the commanders are bleeding out these areas and then sending guys back into them, whether it's the backs or certain other concepts. And so the zone-heavy approach that the Chargers use, I actually think is a bad matchup for this Washington team. And I actually think you saw that manifest a bunch of different times today.

37:30I couldn't agree more. Like that's one of those things where Washington wants to just get you running anyway. And like, because again, the Chargers play so much match stuff, you end up again, running off certain sides of the field. To me, the coolest thing that they did was what you said with the cross-key merit direct snap. And I think there was a two play sequence that like really captures what you want the Washington offense to look like. The play before that, Jaden Daniels actually like scrambles a little bit out to his right and like throws in between the soft spot in the zone to Depot Samuel and finds him a little bit on the move and you're like okay jayden daniels was a little bit up and down i thought for like the first quarter and a half but that was when it was like okay he's starting to find himself so he does that able to make a play on the move and then the next play is they come out in like a normal split back gun look jayden daniels just walks out behind krosky merit slides over and they do this like gt counter read with the running back going the other way from the pullers it was just just doing cool stuff like that i thought was really good and then what i thought in terms of really manipulating a lot of the Chargers rules.

38:30They did a really good job of finding of getting pullers out on the perimeter and out leveraging all of their players in the box. Like there was, I think it might've even been the touchdown to end this drive that we're talking about. That's exactly what it was. It was the 15 yard and America and that drive. It was almost directly after the direct snap. Yeah. So they have trips to the right side into the boundary and the Chargers play man or they, they bring all their corners there. And so that means they're just kind of don't have as many bodies to the wide side of the field with the tight end.

38:58They just pull everybody across and it's like, well, we've cut off all your second level defenders and Crosskey Marriott's just able to have a ton of space to go operate. That drive specifically, I think, was the most emblematic of what Washington's offense felt like in this game. They had a third and 16 completion, a deep one to Jalen Lane. And on that play, they did this twice on the same drive where they have like a little bit of a fast motion to the right side. And whoever's running that little rail route kind of yanks the flat defender away. and then they have like a deep curl coming back to that space and all that ocean of space left voided by the defense.

39:32They hit it twice, one to Lane and then one for 21 to Debo. Then it's the direct snap to Merritt and then it's the 15-yarder that you're talking about, Derek. And so again, I think just really good examples of how you can manipulate the Chargers defense. And so to see this version of Washington with Jaden Daniels back and like you mentioned, without Terry McLaurin even playing in this game, I think a good sign for what this offense can look like moving forward. when they're at full strength. Their success rate as a whole on offense, 58%, led the league for the week, at least with one game to play.

40:03It's also a 10 % jump over any other of their performances this season. Obviously, some of those are with Marcus Mariota and a quarterback, but still, like, this version of the offense being that much better than any other game we've seen from them this year, yeah, I'd say that's encouraging. On the other side of the ball, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this, But Derek, this is kind of just like the worst nightmare, right? Where you have Justin Herbert trying to do some superhero stuff. And I mean, obviously the most telling sequence of this entire game is the drive where he has multiple like 25 yard completions and back to back plays.

40:39There are two penalties on each of those plays and everything gets torpedoed. And so Trey Pivkins gets hurt in this game. You know, Beckton again, I think misses some time at some point in this game. Like it just feels like they're fighting such an uphill battle on that side of the ball. I can't imagine them being able to come out on the other side of that, given the current state of the offensive line anytime soon. And he those two plays that you're making, he makes them from his own red zone. Like those are supposed to be like, I'm bailing us out of this situation plays and they just don't end up mattering.

41:09He was I know the numbers are what they are, but he was like, if you watch him phenomenal in this game, like just some of the stuff that he's able to do outside of the pocket. He had a number of ridiculous tight window throws over the middle of the field. One, he hits the Quentin Johnson on like a deep crosser to the left side. It would have put him, I think, inside like inside the 30 or so. Quentin Johnson ends up fumbling. And it's just like it was constantly stuff like that today where the players around him just failing. And it felt like he was getting pressured immediately, like especially the left side.

41:37Dorrance Armstrong had what felt like an identical sack. Like I thought I was having like deja vu, but he got like the same sack twice. It felt like it just it was a really, really tough day for the Chargers. And again, this was the worst nightmare where I know for most of the season they haven't, you know, they've been having like weird left tackle stuff because you move your right tackle to the left. It's all been weird. But now that alt is out, now that you saw Pipkins miss some time in this game, it's just like you're chipping away at it so much that there's really no quarterback who would make this work, especially when they start to play, you know, fairly competent defense.

42:10I think the Washington has their issues, but the one thing I think they're good at is rushing the passer. And if you don't have any of your linemen, well, that's how you end up with a game like this. Nine of Washington's 13 pressures were quick pressures. So less than two and a half. It's hard to function that way. And I think that was our thought coming into the game is like, would any of this matter on the back end if they were unable to stop the quarterback from getting pressure in the first half a second? And that's the answer is no. The answer is no, but it's also just like the theme for the first two or three weeks of the Chargers season was like, these aren't your dad's Chargers.

42:42Like they're not going to we're not going to have to watch a Charger ring every week. This is this is those Chargers. Like you have a punt return touchdown wiped out by roughing the kicker. You have the 50 whatever yards of receiving yards negated by offensive line penalties. You have the fumble outside the red zone, and then Herbert has the tipped interception that Mikey Samuels still came up with on the goal line, by the way. So, like, with a chance to score points. I try to be active in the Discord on Sundays when I can find the time. I'm sorry I don't remember who said this, but if you're listening, a Chargers fan at that point in the game was like, this is the team I recognize from all these years.

43:24And I was like, yeah. It's a tough place to wind up considering how promising it looks. Great it looked for the first two or three weeks. Yeah, it's tough. Let's get to the other side of the coin here and talk about some of the low light moments from week five. It's time for What the P***. What the P***? What the P***? The Houston Texans pound the Baltimore Ravens 44-10. The Ravens fall to 1-4 on the year. I don't think I really am interested in admonishing the Ravens for this performance, given the state of their defense. I mean, when you watch this game back and what the Texans were doing, they're just relentlessly picking on TJ Tampa, Teddy Buchanan, Ruben Lowry, Keon Martin.

44:06If you don't know who a lot of those guys are, that's not your fault. These are like the second and third string players on the back end for the Ravens. And you felt that over the course of the entire game. The reason that I felt like this was worth talking about, Derek, is that the Ravens are now one in four. like we're veering dangerously close to the season just being over for the team that I think came into the year the presumptive Super Bowl favorite whether it was by consensus of people with opinions or Super Bowl odds anything you wanted to look at this was supposed to be a team that was right up there among the best in the NFL and I think you can make a really serious case that five weeks into the year this thing is probably done I think it's probably toast and And it's like, again, you mentioned all the different players that they had to go out and play.

44:54I had a friend text me today. He was like, what's wrong with the Ravens? I'm like, if I listed their 10 best players, eight of them weren't playing in this game. Like that is ultimately what it comes out. And they had some other issues. Other hand, like defensive line already wasn't playing well. I think offensive line was maybe a little bit worse than we thought. But so long as Lamar and a majority of their other best players were healthy, they would have been fine. But now they're in a point where they're one in four getting completely blasted by a Texans team that really hasn't been able to score on anybody.

45:20And then now they play the Rams next week, who again, the Rams are a weird team and just lost a weird game to the 49ers. But I think we all expect the Rams to be a pretty solid playoff team. And so now we're ending up with a spot where the Ravens are probably staring down the barrel of one in five. And at that point, you have two losses left for the less the rest 11 games that you're going to play. I think even if Lamar comes back healthy and is like a superhero that is asking a lot of this team. All right. So. I have a pretty important question at one and four are we ready to take the Ravens off the table?

45:56Don't do this to me I have not thought this far We don't have to make a decision right now. This is what you miss by not being here Derek because we've been arguing about it all night He's not ready yet It's five weeks in I won't do it. He's not ready yet. I can't do it and I know how insane that sounds but okay Just while you're thinking that over, Derek. Yeah, I mean, they do play the Rams next week. They play the Rams next week, potentially without Lamar again. It's hard to imagine they don't get smashed. And the defense is still going to be decimated against a better offense. The Texans look like the best offense in the league yesterday.

46:33They had 20 combined Pro Bowls and$97 million in salary cap inactive today. So how many of those guys are going to be back next week? I don't know. Probably not enough to beat the Rams. Exactly. And so how many teams ever have one in five made the playoffs? And I know they have their bye week after this and maybe some of these guys can get healthy, but it just feels like even if they're a good team after the bye, they're so far behind the eight ball that I just I don't know. Guys, don't make me do this where I'm like pitching this because I don't really believe it. But look, OK, they play the Rams.

47:05Then they have the bye. After that, the schedule's not scary. like there like there's not a ton until you get to like you have a stretch of New England and Green Bay at the very end of the season but like after the bye week it's Chicago it's Miami it's the Vikings it's two games against Cincinnati another game against Cleveland like a lot of winnable games on the schedule assuming assuming Lamar Jackson is your quarterback and assuming some Some of these other guys come back. This is all with the hope that like Roquan Smith and Marlon Humphrey and obviously Lamar Jackson will all be part of this.

47:46All right. If the Ravens, if like if they can just hold on to where that happens, like you mean to tell me that they couldn't put together like a 10 and 7 and be a wildcard team? I don't know if they can win the division. I think their best path to the playoffs is probably winning the division because the Steelers are 3-1, but I still don't think I believe in the Steelers. And so I think that there is a potential path to be like a 10-7 winner of the AFC North. And because that's the case, I think that's why I'm not like automatically ruling this out. But if they lose next week, if they're 1-5, I think I'm ready to take them off and put the Seahawks on.

48:29i think probably like again like they could still be a decent team after but if they are one in five you have almost no margin for error to lose more than two games after that and again you play the packers you play the patriots look like a solid team they will lose one of those stealers games one way or another they will find a way yeah that's important to remember yes uh they still get the vikings who you know the offense is kind of weird but the defense is still pretty good like Like the pass rush is pretty good. Like I just, there still feel like enough losable games here that to only have a margin of error for two does not feel like enough.

49:02I hate, I would have no problem with any of this if we could like put them back. But we, we, we have this rule where once you take them off, there's no putting them back on. It's the only reason that I'm not like firing away here is because I don't still see a path where somehow they turn this around because I think the division is still kind of winnable despite what this has looked like so far. I don't want to be here in December and the Ravens have won six of their last seven and we took them off the table. I think that's fair. But if they're a one and five and then we're in a place where they essentially have to go nine and two over the rest of the season in order to make the playoffs, even that feels like a slim margin.

49:40I think I might be ready to have that conversation. I'll tell you this. It would have to be with Lamar. If Lamar doesn't play next week, then I'll fight you on this as long as I can. But that'll be a conversation for another time. Any takeaways from the Texans in this game, Derek? For me, it's like a good on you. Like took care of business in the way that they needed to. I felt like the offense, there's some signs of life. The thing that really jumped out to me, and this is a very small thing, but I think that details like this, I always, when we talk about like Cooper Cup being like the most important player on some of those big Seahawks games, I thought that Dalton Schultz had a really good game today as like a blocker.

50:18And the buy-in in those sorts of ways, That's what I didn't see over the first three games of the season. And so to see the entire offense top to bottom, just have a little bit of life, even if you consider how bad the competition was on the other side. I think it's just what you want to see out of a Texans offense that really, really was struggling over the first couple of weeks. That's kind of all I took from it. There's not a whole lot that like schematically or anything that I'm tapping into here. This is just like a you if you're going to pretend to be a serious team for the rest of the season, you need to at least be able to hammer a decimated Ravens team like this.

50:52And they at least did that and didn't shoot themselves in the foot at all. Didn't make any mistakes. They were able to just look like a competent offense. And CJ Stroud looked like the quarterback that we want him to. So this to me was just like more than any other like playoff hopeful offense. I think they needed a feel good day and they got it. Speaking of unserious teams, I want to bucket two teams together here as we get to our next what the f*** entry. the Dallas Cowboys beat up on the Jets 37 to 22. That is a very misleading score. It was 30 to three at one point. The Colts beat the Raiders 40 to six.

51:28That puts the Jets at 0 and 5. It puts the Raiders at 1 and 4. And why I feel like we can kind of put these two teams together in this moment is that these teams with new leadership, with new head coaches, new people in charge, there was supposed to be like adults in the room. There was supposed to be a certain level of competency that they were bringing into this season even with the amount of change that we were seeing. And that's just not what this has looked like over the first five weeks. So the Jets are now the only winless team in the NFL. The Raiders are one and four and it seems crazy now that they beat the Patriots in week one, but that did happen.

52:07So both the Jets and the Raiders after today, what the f***? you remember when we did the AFC's preview, we like, we laid out the case for optimism with the jets and like, you know, you can do some fun stuff in the run game. You can make life easier on Justin Fields. And, and we talked about like Aaron Glenn can lend his expertise to this defense and maybe he can get them back to playing at like a 2022 level. There's obviously talent here in your heart of hearts. did you ever think that we'd be kind of right about the offense and so so wrong about the defense i didn't really think that and that's what's so disheartening about this is that again when you're trying to lay out the successful path quote unquote for the jets this year the hope was you come away from all these games being like man they're a little bit outgunned but they do the right things they play hard they're in the right spots derrick i feel the exact opposite way about the defense right now.

53:05They're going against a Cowboys team today that doesn't have CeeDee Lamb and is missing four starters along the offensive line. And they got bludgeoned for a huge portion of this game. Like you look at what's happening on the second and third level of this defense against the run and tackling in space. And this is not an exaggeration. It's as bad as it could possibly look. And so if the optimistic case was, even if they're not there talent wise, they're doing the right things. They're always in the right spots. I feel about as far away from that right now on that side of the ball as I possibly can.

53:41And these are guys they've invested in. Like you go back and watch the all 22 of the run game with Jamie and Sherwood in this game. And you tell me how you feel about the current state of the New York jets. That is to me, the most disheartening thing is I really thought they were at least going to feel put together. Guys are trying guys are hitting all that sort of stuff and i know they're a little have missing a couple of guys but this like there i'm glad you said the second and third level tackling it is about as bad as it for any team in this league and like just think about all the big plays in this game ferguson scores on a screen touchdown where like does not feel like to me people are getting to like over the top of blocks the way that they could and really trying to attack him and obviously aren't able to make any tackle there um ryan florinoy broke a number of tackles on some of his big catches in this game and then obviously the one that uh Javante Williams breaks off for like the 66 yarder first of all I think uh a defensive end misses the first tackle Andre Sisko is trying to fly down uh from the safety spot and takes like a weird angle doesn't really get aggressive enough and he misses that tackle runs into his own teammate doing that and Williams is able to spring feet like it's just very sloppy football and this is just not at all what I thought it would look like with Aaron Glenn like this was already a secondary that I had some issues with that the last couple of years but I thought maybe you just re-energize some stuff maybe they feel a little bit better about the offense they're playing with and some of that will fix itself and it's just you know five weeks in it's as bad as it was at the worst spots last year the end zone copy of those plays the 66 yarder that Javante Williams ripped off and the Jake Ferguson screen is so abysmal like multiple the screen in particular you just see three different players running themselves out of the play and like it's a play action it's a you know there's a play action on the screen where you Dak throws back to the tight end but the degree to which like half the defense bites on it and runs themselves six yards out of position I mean you we just ran the highlight like Jake Ferguson is lumbering you know he's not exactly moving quick and a Jets defender doesn't put hands on him until he's like five yards away from the end zone it's it was startlingly bad defense That was when you list off the names of the Cowboys skill position players who are making plays.

55:55Oh, my God. The Flournoy part of this. First of all, like the the the huge catch he has down the right sideline is just like the worst moment. Like this is the this is Brandon Stevens at his worst. Right. Like he's in the right position. Ball's in the air. Cannot find it. And I think it is funny just because we've seen him do that so many times. But Derek, the entire argument for the Jets, I think, is for why this could have worked out. I think you can boil it down to the Brandon Stevens thing. we're going to go get Brandon Stevens because we think that he has a certain skill set and the limitations and kind of the warts that he has as a player, we can work on that.

56:29We can fix that. We can get to him to be the best version of himself. That play is Brandon Stevens as the worst version of himself. And that's what we're seeing from every single member of this defense. And so the Flournoy part of it, the fact that he had a monster game, I think says a lot. The Jake Ferguson touchdown that you just laid out, They had a third and 10 check down completion to Hunter Lepke at some point in this game that went for a first down. Oh, they sure did. I forgot about that. And it was like the most obvious give up call ever. It was a check down. It was a third and 10 check down that goes for a first down.

57:01I mean, there were just so many of those in this game. And again, I think Sherwood was the guy that just consistently running himself out of plays. The final numbers for the Cowboys in this game, just to kind of put a pin in this, when you think about this performance overall. 20.26 EPA per play for Dallas, 7.1 yards per play. For some context, the Ravens last year were at 0.16 EPA per play and 6.7 yards per play. Both of those led the league. So the Cowboys, without CeeDee Lamb and without four offensive line starters, were more efficient and explosive on a down-to-down level than the 2024 Ravens were over the course of the season.

57:41That's where this Jets team is right now. Which and that's why I'm not going to take too much away from this from a Cowboys perspective, but I covered a lot of Cowboy teams who could not scheme around having like Tyron Smith out of the lineup and like having your starting left tackle out would be the reason why you lost that week. pretty damn impressive no matter how sorry the Jets are with the amount of firepower that the Cowboys just did not have on the field to to not only win but score 40 points and just have it wrapped up at halftime I that's pretty incredible but also it's pretty damning of where the Jets are for as bad as the Jets performance was today the Raiders one aesthetically looks even worse they get destroyed 40 to 6 the Raiders defense had didn't have a lot of hope coming into the season period based on the personnel.

58:28I mean, you would talk about the names you're listing off for the Ravens defense right now. The Raiders defense kind of started that way and it's not getting any better, but it's the little things that frustrate me, Derek. It's the fact that again, we wanted this to be a team where can we take you seriously because you're doing the right things on the margins. This feels like a buttoned up operation. They get a punt blocked inside the 10 yard line today and they had a punt return touchdown that they allowed that ultimately didn't count because of a penalty. It's just every single week, this team is hurting itself and not doing the types of things we wanted to see out of a group that we thought might be well coached, even if they had some talent limitations.

59:09And so I think a lot of the same things where you're trying to understand that it's a multi-year timeline. This is year one of a new regime. As long as you're getting the most out of the players that you have, that's the box you want to be checking. And through the first five weeks, I think we can definitively say that has not been the case for Pete Carroll's Raiders. It hasn't been like this was again, I think we a lot of us thought that getting in Pete Carroll, there would like raise what the floor could be here. But again, my biggest issue with this team is, yeah, like you said, we knew they were going to have some talent issues along the secondary in particular and maybe the offensive line.

59:43But even both of those units, I think, have been worse than we might have thought, because again, they are not getting some of the help from the coaching that I think that we thought they would get the linebacker room again, not super talented, but they have been all over the place in terms of like their heads are spinning, not fitting the run very well. They really the only fixer on this team really is Max Crosby. And against offenses that are still young, like the Bears, he can make enough plays to keep you in games against offenses that are as buttoned up as Indianapolis and have as many guys to go to.

1:00:10That's just not going to be enough in games like this. And then really, I've become more frustrated with the offense, like the defense. You could have told me that this just wasn't going to work out well because of exactly the offense the offensive line is the worst version of itself that it could possibly be in this game they didn't have brock bowers or michael mayer and you just felt a complete inability to throw one over the middle of the field or get any of your gimmies right like brock bowers is your can we just get the ball to a guy and make a play player and they did not have him in this game and that that really um i think hurt them and then to me geno smith right now is just as bad a decision maker as I've seen him in the last three, four years.

1:00:49It's like, I just don't, I don't understand what the issue is. He just does not feel nearly as buttoned up as he has been in years past. It's going to be really unfortunate that people are going to retcon the last three years of because of what's happening right now. And I listen, you can, you don't have to believe me. I understand that people are tired of this and if that's going to be the case, I get it. That's fine. I just, just some numbers I want to throw out just for like a little bit of context. Geno Smith has been a better quarterback over the last two years than he is right now. I just think that that's, anybody who watched him over the last two years, I think that's self-evident.

1:01:24Here's some numbers to kind of put a little bit of specificity to it. Last season, he had a turnover-worthy play rate of 2.6%, which was tied for 16th in the NFL. He threw a ton of interceptions. A lot of those came off of tipped balls. He was not putting the ball in harm's way as often as the interception level would lead you to believe. It was middle of the road in terms of how often he was making turnover-worthy plays. This year, it's gone from 2.6 % to 5.3%, which is a top-five rate in the NFL. The ball is going into harm's way far more often than it was even last year when he was throwing a lot of picks.

1:01:59In terms of his accuracy, over the last two seasons, he has been the most accurate quarterback in the NFL that has been a full-time starter. You look at some of the numbers, he had a 6.6 % off-target percentage per PFF in 2024, which is the second best mark in the NFL. This year, it's 9.8%, which ranks 19th. Last year, he ranked 15th in pressure to sack rate. This year, he's a bottom 10 rate in the league. 25 % of his pressures are turning into sacks. On every single front, he is the worst version of Geno Smith that we have seen as a starter since he took over in Seattle. So I know how this is going to go.

1:02:39If he keeps playing this way, everyone's just going to say, this is who he's always been. He's never been good. And we're just being, it's just being confirmed right now. I think there are a lot of numbers and there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that would say that is not the case. And it's unfortunate that the narrative is going to go this way because I already see it happening. I am a fan of Gino's game. I'm right there with you. But like the brutal reality right now, I'm not talking about anything that happened in Seattle. right now he is playing exactly like the detractors would have you believe he always that's 100 right uh which sucks and not like i i watched all those games and i went back and re-watched all of them later on on the internet like he wasn't that quarterback but he is that quarterback right now and you can point to a hundred different reasons why that might be the case, but because of who he was in Seattle and how successful he was there, despite suboptimal conditions, a lot of the time he was supposed to be able to raise the floor of this offense and he's making it worse more often than not.

1:03:45It's brutal to watch. It sucks. It's incredibly well said. That's exactly the situation is we thought that the combination of Pete Carroll, Chip Kelly, Geno Smith, at some point would raise the floor for what the Raiders would look like. And that just hasn't happened. And the quarterback has been as much of a problem and a part of that as he has been a fixer of that. The last one here in our WTF moments of week four, the Cardinals Titans game is the dumbest NFL football game I can remember watching in a really, really long time. Okay. There are four plays in this game that in my opinion could be the single dumbest play of any NFL game in a given week.

1:04:25The intentional grounding that Kyler takes at some point early in this game is the funniest intentional grounding I've ever seen. The half-hearted attempt to even act like he's trying to throw this ball forward is incredible. Somebody on Twitter said this. I can't remember who it is, but I'm stealing it because they're responding to me talking about it. It's like he was a teenager throwing a blunt out the window, just like out of desperation. Like that, that's what that felt like. Just an incredible moment from Kyler here. And that was like the fourth craziest thing that happened. The fumble, the Cardinals are in field goal range with 457 left in the third quarter.

1:05:04I don't know what the pre-snap operation is. I don't know what's happening with the pre-snap operation. But as the ball is getting snapped, the right guard stands up and taps his head. I'm assuming to check something. Both tackles don't move. Yelta Froholtz snaps the ball. It hits Kyler in the face so hard that he recoils and the Titans jump on it. Okay. So that's the funniest play in any game and pretty much any week of the NFL. Then we get the Amari DiMarcano fumble that would have put the Cardinals up 27 to 6 late enough, like early in the fourth quarter. So it's been a 21 point game. Instead, the Titans get the ball back.

1:05:44And oh yeah, there is a touchdown scored after the Cardinals pick off a pass. Taylor Demerson fumbles it inside the 10. Max Melton kicks the ball toward the end zone. And on a play where they throw an interception in the fourth quarter down nine points, the Titans score a touchdown and ultimately jumpstart their chance to win the game. Arizona Cardinals. What the this is the most any team has tried to lose a football game in. I don't even know how long and I think what's even crazier to me is the Titans also tried to lose this game a little bit like when they so many times when they score the touchdown that gets them to 12 you should go for two so you can get the game to 14 to 21 because kicking the extra point there doesn't really do enough for you it still makes it to the extra point yes and then they miss the extra point and it's like how you make the wrong decision and then you miss the extra your point so and then obviously throwing the pick right there is is obviously trying to lose the game like both teams trying really hard to lose the game the cardinals just tried that much more to it just a ridiculous ridiculous outcome there was a shot after the tyler lockett recovery touchdown they cut to brian callahan celebrating and it was like the most it's so over we're so back moment.

1:07:05It was just, it was incredible to see like how excited he was about how that just completely saved their asses randomly. Everybody in that locker room. I mean, this is like finding water in the desert. Like these were desperate, desperate men near the end of this game. They needed this so bad. And I don't think, I think this is an ugly game for Tennessee and congratulations to them for getting the win. I'm sure everyone there is feeling great. I still think there are some rough times ahead for the Titans this year. Oh, yeah. And we'll talk about the future of that franchise and maybe some of the bigger picture considerations with them.

1:07:42But at the end of the day, this is still a team with a rookie quarterback that didn't really have high expectations this year. Right. Like, I think we thought they were going to be better than they've been. Yeah. But Vegas didn't. I don't think that was like a general consensus opinion. Derek, this is the make or break year for the Cardinals, right? Like this is supposed to be the year where you have built up this infrastructure into your third season together. You've spent all this money on defense. Like this is the season where you are supposed to push to be a playoff team and they have regressed.

1:08:14This sort of loss and this sort of performance is not excusable when you are a team that comes into the year with playoff aspirations. And so for as ugly as it's been for the Titans, this type of game is way more disappointing for the Cardinals. Well, that's where this is frustrating for me is I think to me, I came into the season thinking, I know they made a lot of additions on defense, but I was unsure overall if they were a better tier of team based on all the things that they did in the offseason. And so if that tier of team got you to eight and nine, nine and eight last year, what if a couple of things bounced the wrong way for you this year?

1:08:50Maybe a couple of guys get injured or you have a game like this where you try to shoot yourself in the foot eight different times. And if you do that enough times, you end up, again, being that quality of team and you fall below the 500 line and you don't make the playoffs. And that's especially troubling this year where the Rams are still the Rams. The Seahawks are way better than they were last year. And the Niners, I know they've got a lot of weird stuff injury, but they look like a better team than they were last year, or at least have enough banked up wins in a way that I think is pretty nice for them compared to last year.

1:09:16They have gone from, I think going into this season, you could have made a pretty good case that they could be the second best team in the division. And now they're pretty firmly to me like the worst team and the most frustrating team in this division. I think that's a really good way to frame it. That's a really good perspective to have is that even in a year where the Niners have been banged up and we didn't know what the Seahawks could be, the fact that through five weeks, the Cardinals definitively feel like the worst team in the NFC West, that is just not how this year was supposed to go.

1:09:44No, it was, I mean, goodness gracious. We, or at least I did. like the comparison to the Dan Campbell Lions, like building up to that sort of performance. And there's a lot of season left. You know, the Lions went on that run in the second half of 2022. Or was it 20? Yeah, 2022. But that was year two. Exactly. Like you're a year after that. You're supposed to be further along, and that does not seem to be the case. And you make, if one of those ridiculous things doesn't happen, then you win this game and it might be ugly, but it's a win. And now here you are. I think fortunately for them, they're not as popular as the Packers.

1:10:29So I don't know if people are going to harp on them the way that people harped on the Packers for the Browns loss. But like, this is the worst loss of the year. Yeah, absolutely. It's by far the worst loss any team has had when you consider the fact that they should have had a walk-in touchdown to go up 27 to 6 early in the fourth quarter. All right, before we move on, let's take one more quick break.

1:10:51I mean, this thing was a thing of beauty. Each week we like to pick out one thing that made us feel all warm and fuzzy, the type of stuff that we love about what an NFL Sunday is. I'm going to start this off. I love watching really good play callers when they are completely backed into a corner, right? Where you know going in, they're going to be shorthanded. How do they handle this? The game that comes to mind for me from last year is what the Packers did when Malik Willis had to start. I watch that game and I think about that game and I'm like, this is what coaching is, right? Coaching in football, it's a very simple thing.

1:11:28What are you doing with the players at your disposal? How are you going to get the best out of them? Week in and week out, that is your job. It's a pretty simple thing that we make very complex. Coming into this game, the Vikings are missing three offensive line starters. and do not have their starting quarterback. They're playing with a backup quarterback. They're playing against a defense that has ripped teams limb by limb for the most part for the first four weeks. You mentioned a Packers team that was rolling. The Browns go in and beat them up in their own building. What Kevin O 'Connell did in this game and just all the little tiny buttons he was trying to press in order to give his guys a shot, I thought was phenomenal.

1:12:11and it manifested in several different ways. The two that I'll throw out that I think are kind of encapsulated. In this game, the Vikings had a 19.5 % design rollout percentage, which is the highest in any Vikings game over the last three seasons. There's a stat with NextGen where it's the time you spend in the box, right? So how long are you actually in the tackle box after the ball was snapped? In this game for the Vikings, it was 2.4 seconds on average, which was the fastest of any Vikings game over the past three years. Every single thing that they did was designed to get four hands on as many pass rushers as we could and make sure we weren't leaving our quarterback out to dry in the pocket and trying to use the aggressiveness of that Browns defense against them.

1:12:59There were so many plays, you can't even pick out specific ones, where every single time they dropped back to pass, the pass rush, the edge rush was getting chipped. every single time, whether it was with backs, whether it was with tight ends, whether it was with receivers. And they just did such a good job of making sure, I know this team just tears after the ball. How can I make them pay for it? And the play that just really jumps out to me is on the touchdown drive that ends with the wildcat throw from Cam Akers. They had a 20-yard completion to Jalen Naylor where they motion him in. It's a little insert play action where we get a little bit of a bite from Greg Newsome and then you have like a big corner route from Naylor for a 20-yard gain.

1:13:39It's a simple thing, but that's what this entire game felt like for the Vikings, where it's these little tiny bits of misdirection, getting the quarterback just outside of the pocket so he's not a sitting duck. And when you combine that with Justin Jefferson being an actual superhero, you get a win like this for the Vikings in London. It was so apparent so quickly what they were doing. Like the one that stands out to me, and this is 14 hours ago, but motioning Jefferson into the backfield, like from out wide, putting him at, you know, he's in the he's at running back and like an eye and an eye one back formation.

1:14:18And it's just like a sprint out for an easy. I don't even remember how many yards he picked up, but it's just like, oh, it's a great way to get him away from his coverage and just get him an easy look. And they were doing stuff like that throughout definitely in the early going of this game, but really throughout the entire afternoon. It was yeah, it was really impressive on Kevin O 'Connell's part. Yeah, it's too hard to pick out that many like single moments. But one of the first big general notes I had on this game was every good Vikings play is nonsense or some bullshit or Justin Jefferson.

1:14:47That's the best compliment you can give him. Exactly. And like you said, games like this, where a play caller gets to do that. You bring up some of the stuff that Matt LaFleur did last year with Malik Willis. But to me, with Matt LaFleur, it's always the Aaron Jones game against Arizona like three or four years ago where he gave him like 11 targets because every receiver was down. Just when these guys, these like top five, six play callers get to just rub their hands together and do something insanely cool. It's just it's it's always a treat. And especially in this case where it's an island game.

1:15:17What do you guys got? What made you feel romantic about football today, David? I think Derek and I came down two similar situations that espouse the same idea. And one thing I love about football and the NFL in particular, because it's so even. If you just hang around, if you just make enough plays to survive, and that's why the witching hour exists as a concept. If you can just hang around, not get knocked out and be within striking distance as you get toward the end of the game, the football gods are going to give you the opportunity to rewrite the script no matter what happened in the early going.

1:15:55And Bryce Young's day really illustrates that for me. Because remember, when you talked about at the top of the show, some of these games ballooned quickly and you're debating like, we keeping this on the TV? Are we sure? You just want to put something else in a solo screen so we're not squinting at the screen. Panthers go down 17-0 again. Miami went up 17-0 early second quarter. It felt over. It was like, this is it. It was beyond over. We're shutting the door. Bryce got stripped by Bradley Chubb. He threw high on like a dig and Minka Fitzpatrick picked it off. And, you know, like, I mean, you make jokes, right?

1:16:36Like in the early going of this game, you're just like, well, thanks for playing, Bryce. This is the same shit as last week. Like the Panthers are terrible. They're helpless. And again, you're debating turning it off. And from there, they just sort of stayed alive, right? Remember the sequence, you know, three scoring drives after they go down 17-0, two field goal drives. And at the end of the first half, they're doing everything in their power to screw it up. Like they've got like no timeouts. There's less than 10 seconds. They're trying to throw into the end zone, even though it hasn't been working all day.

1:17:06And you're just like, Robert was screaming at the TV. Like, just just kick, just kick the field goal and get to half down 1710. I promise you it'll be OK. Get the ball at half. And it's not like this team is beyond taking a sack in that situation. And like so for the rest of the day that they're just surviving, obviously. Shout out to Rico Dowdle. Game of his life. Monster game. 200 yards. He had a huge hand in this, but they clawed back in. And there you are with five minutes to play on your own 17. And Bryce Young gets his chance and they go 83 yards. 24-yard completion to Xavier Leggett on the corner route, like a whole shot between the corner and the safety.

1:17:45Nice throw. Gets to fourth and five on the Miami 33 with three and a half to play. And I think it was like a smash concept with Jimmy Horn, who we highlighted in the damn preview episode. I didn't actually believe that when I said it. And there's Jimmy Horn bringing in just a fantastic catch with Rasul Douglas draped all over him. Phenomenal catch. And then two snaps later, Bryce throws it in for the go-ahead touchdown. And I never would have dreamed when it was 17-0, 15 minutes into the early window that we would have that moment. But they stayed alive long enough for it to happen. That's what I love about football, man.

1:18:23It was so cool. Derek, we had another number one pick who had a similar sort of moment when his team got to stick around in this game. Cam Ward is what made you feel romantic about football today. I think I can guess that. Yeah, you definitely can. And this for me was it's part of it is just it's cool to see a guy get his chance to like go and finally win a football game. And again, whether or not the Titans deserve to win this game is a whole nother thing. But the fact that he finally gets that, especially with how frustrating things have been for them, and especially we go back all the way to really early in the season, he was giving his team chances to beat Denver with late game throws and like putting the putting the ball on guys and like making sure that he was giving his guys chances.

1:19:01They just kept dropping them in this game. he's able to find I think it was Chica Conco over the middle of the field kind of near the sticks and that moves them into like okay that gets us to about midfield maybe we can go and kick a field go and start to win this game very shortly after that he puts a beautiful go ball down the right hand sideline for Calvin Ridley and that allows them to be like okay we're actually in scoring rage we can go and win this game we can go and win this game 22 to 21 like this was just the fact that he made the throws again that he was making similarly in week one and now they finally the guys on the other end caught them he got the win he can get what that feeling is like in the nfl it's it's just a cool thing five of six for 67 on that final possession for cam ward yeah that was cathartic too for some number one picks on bad teams that wear like electric blue that's that's that's romantic that was what was romantic about football in week five i have some thoughts about the bryce young game i think i'm not gonna rain on your guys's parade here i'm gonna i'm gonna let you have I'm gonna let you here's the here's the here's what's so cool about it you can you don't have to rain on my parade because like yeah like I think the Panthers are a flawed team the they did not exercise their demons fully here but it's just cool to say like and and Derek just said it like maybe the Titans didn't deserve to win that game but you know what they hung on long enough for the opportunity to present itself and in that moment Bryce Young and Cam Ward made the most of the opportunity.

1:20:30And that's that I, that is as far as I will go. It might not have long ranging ramifications. It's just cool. Today to me, it was very indicative of like the Bryce Young push and pull that we have felt from the second half of last season. And then too often over the last two seasons, you saw early in the game, like his physical limitations are just so pronounced in some of those moments that fumble, the kind of the inability to get up to escape pressure when, you know, he's flushed out. He's just not an explosive player and he's a very small person. And so you just feel what those limitations look like on an NFL field.

1:21:03And then you have some of those beautiful touch and timing throws on those corner routes and outside the numbers. And you come, I come from away from this game, just kind of realizing that as promising as those moments are, they're probably not going to be enough to outweigh the limitations in the long ground. That's my unfortunate conclusion after watching the Panthers today is that like, I love exactly what you said, that throw to Jimmy Horn and some of the ones that we saw down the stretch. I just don't think even as beautiful as those moments are and as aesthetically that's what I like watching from quarterback play, I think the limitations are ultimately going to eat him when it comes to the long-term outlook for this team and for him.

1:21:44I think that's probably fair. Yeah, I mean, the clips, Ward's missile to Ridley versus what Bryce Young is doing. It's like watching Drake May tonight. Yeah, it's like a pretty stark contrast. I think, again, the best case scenario for Bryce Young is he's a viable NFL quarterback in the long term. I think today, even with some of the highlight moments, there are a lot of reminders about why that still might be in question. I think that's completely fair. I love for the guy that he stayed off the mat long enough for this to happen for him at the end of this game. To me, the biggest takeaway from this game is that, like the, again, it was same as last year.

1:22:19Like the mental toughness to come back from what he did last year is incredible. And the fact that they didn't fold in this game, I think they deserve a ton of credit for that. It's just one of those things where I watched the game and I'm like, ah, this is, there's still so many moments where it just reminds me of why it's, he's probably going to get held back at the end of the day. All right. So Robert is swaying over to the Derek side of things. Yeah. I was like, I'm not going to push it. I'm going to, I've, I've already said my piece with all of it. So I'm, I just, he is what he is. Let me have my moment.

1:22:48It's just, this is a league of professionals and you have to be a certain caliber of height, weight, size, speed. And it's just, it's hard to overcome some of that stuff. Yeah, it's a tough needle to thread. And I just think that, again, some of the circumstantial things need to be so correct for him to be okay. And I think it's going to be hard for teams to consistently put that around him. But Bryce and I will take this moment and we will just, we'll keep it pushing. I'm not saying either one of you are wrong, but we're just going to take the W right now and see what happens later. This next segment is going to be very ironic considering what I just said, giving up on a quarterback two and a half years into his career.

1:23:23But let's talk about what we learned today. You know, I think I've learned something today. I think that this is something that we've touched on a lot over the last two years because there have been so many examples of it. But watching Baker and Sam Darnold today, two guys who were cast off of the Carolina Panthers at some point and were in their own ways in moments over the last couple of years in the football wilderness. Like, I think people are going to joke that like, you know, Baker's, what Baker came back from was being a Cleveland Brown. Baker was released. Like he was released by the Panthers at one point.

1:23:58Sam Darnold was available for free. And what I learned today is something that I think, again, we've come to know over the last couple of years. How many different things need to fall into place for quarterbacks to be successful in the NFL? they're innumerable. It's hard to understand all the contextual reasons that guys succeed or fail. The Baker-Donald thing is the headline one because I think it's very easy to play up the narrative of both of them playing Carolina at the same time. But what about Mac freaking Jones, right? Mac Jones is another guy who is available for free. He goes to San Francisco and he is capable of putting on a performance like we saw from him on Thursday night.

1:24:38And so it's just a really stark reminder of how many things play into a quarterback success or failure and how winding and long of a road it can be before we can ultimately make a decision finally on these guys. You can keep going, man. Daniel Jones. Daniel Jones, yeah, exactly. I forgot Daniel Jones. 40-point day for the Colts. They're 4-1. Take it way back. We can successfully rewrite history to the point where people don't even view him this way anymore, but the Lions rolled over the Bengals for their fourth straight win. Jared Goff was seen as a salary dump when he got to Detroit. And he's an MVP candidate.

1:25:19So, yeah, I mean, down the list. And every single year, it seems. And, yeah, I think we talk about it a lot because it's so fascinating. But on a day like today where Baker and Sam put on a show like that, it's worth remembering. Daniel Jones is the one I was missing. We're 14 hours into this. that Daniel Jones is the other name that was absolutely worth bringing up because he's been the starkest and I think the most obvious example this year specifically before we got to Mac Jones. But week five, another reminder of what that dynamic has felt like in the NFL over the last couple of years. All right.

1:25:53That is all we've got for the week five recap. The Hangover Show tomorrow will be a deeper dive into the Sunday night game. We will hit the Giants-Saints game. Probably could have been a WTF game for the Giants in any other week that didn't have some of what we got from this week. Like the Cardinals thrust their way into that conversation based on the way that that game ended. So we'll dig into Saints Giants tomorrow. And then we also, like you just alluded to, we will hit on the Bengals Lions game. So those will be the three games tomorrow. Please leave us a voicemail. If you're struggling after today, Bell, what's the voicemail number?

1:26:27I always forget. It is 847-448-0701. If you're having a hard time after today, if you're working through some feelings, if you want to talk them out, please leave us a voicemail. We will hit a couple of those on tomorrow's show for our Monday morning. For now, that is all we've got today. If you're watching on YouTube, highly encourage you guys to like and subscribe to the channel. Doing a lot more stuff specifically for YouTube this year. Derek's latest scheme video is out, came out over the weekend. Encourage you guys to check that out. For now, that's all we got. Sincerely appreciate you guys listening.

1:27:02We'll talk to you very soon.

1:27:12We'll see you next week.