Shough, Yeah: Recapping Week 17

31:15I've interviewed him. Go check it out on YouTube. Dominique, are you a shuck boy? I'm joining you as a shuck boy. He has – so he's imperfect, obviously, another 26-year-old young quarterback. So like maybe his upside is a little lower than you would want it to be. But you see everything in the course of the last four games is what I focused on. It's not blowing anyone out of the water, but it's a consistent starting quarterback that can give you a chance to succeed. And maybe he improves and gets better. I think the scheme is good and he operates it well. You see him work all the way across the entire field a number of times.

32:01His accuracy isn't as consistent as you would want it to be. But, like, you see him effectively executing the quick game, working from one side of progression to the other side of progression. You see him using his athleticism to buy time and make plays out of nothing. Like, he does all the things that you want a high-end quarterback to do. He just doesn't do them at the highest of ends. And he got Olave involved in the game. So, like, I think the only reason why I brought up his age is because normally for a rookie quarterback, if you see this type of stuff, you're over the moon. You're like, all right, we'll build on this and he'll grow.

32:37He still might. Like, you can get better as older, but it just feels a little less likely. But it was great. You build up the team around them. It's really nice. Because they've won, they've dropped back in the draft. So they're eighth now, I think. So I don't think that they'll be in quarterback drafting position. but it doesn't seem like they they need to be yeah it's it's so watching the titans statement like the titans defense is very bad we must acknowledge this um i think i the thing i was struck by was just he he made he made a lot of throws downfield where i was really impressed by the ball placement yeah i mean there's no coincidence that chris olave is kind of like come back alive since he's been you know over the last few weeks and um there's an aggression and willingness to push the ball downfield but also i think enough accuracy for you to feel good about where things are going moving forward since week eight i'm gonna update these numbers because i gave them on throws over 10 yards he has fourth in qbr sixth in epa per drop back 10th in success rate and it feels sustainable now he takes a lot of sacks don't love that it's interesting because that the rap on him coming out of college was he didn't take any sacks because he was just throwing it away and it almost feels like now he's a little bit a little bit never say die um and i wonder if some of that is like the reaction to that or a little bit um so i don't love that but But I feel that, you know, I haven't evaluated next year's draft yet, so I don't have, like, strong takes on that.

34:20But I feel like he has already shown that he was worth the pick. No question. And for a rebuilding team that's finally getting out of cap hell, avoiding the quarterback carousel for a year is really good, I think. You know, especially given their position. So, yeah, I've enjoyed watching him. I mean, I think, you know, some of the talks about him, he's better than Borey. It's a little premature, and I've seen a few overreactions. But there's definitely enough there for you to be optimistic about what he has shown as an athlete, as a thrower downfield, as a decision maker. Yeah, I think he's shown enough.

35:04And with a smart offensive mind, which he has there, I think he's shown enough that improved talent around him, you can be a competitor. He's one of those quarterbacks to me right now. What he can do on top of that, we'll see. But I think that's the part that's really impressive is that Kellen Moore is a good offensive coordinator, and he has a quarterback that can operate the offense and also take you a little above. He has some creative plays, some creativity plays. is the competition also is a knock. I focused on the last four. You said you went back to 10 or so, right? But I focused on the last four and it was Tennessee.

35:51The Panthers got a pretty good defense. The Jets and Tampa Bay is not great defense. Not great defense. You mentioned Kellen Moore. Dudes are open. That's the other thing. He is a good offensive play caller. I'm consistently impressed by, and Chuck, he's hitting them, right? But guys are open in this offense. He's the other part of why Chris Olave is thriving. I would love to see them add another pass catcher this offseason. And then defensively, things are trending in the right direction too. Again, competition matters, but I think last I checked, they were 13th in DVOA, which is quite a jump over last year.

36:31You got young players playing well, old guys playing well. Cam Jordan was like weirdly unbelievable. So, yeah, Saints. What do you consider young? Like Chase Young, I mean, does he qualify as a young player or old player? He's weirdly not weird. Sorry, I keep saying weirdly. I don't think he what is he? OK, I'm going to guess he's 28. Yeah, probably. I know he's been four years, five years, 26. He's only 26. Oh, he's definitely a young player. you saw that strip fumble he like just took the ball from cam warden scored a touchdown i had brissy's been playing well i love i think the young dbs have been good i would like them to add like a defensive tackle to my at the ageless to mario davis all right uh let's take a quick break okay oh bonus winner raiders fans congrats you won the tank bowl everyone pick baby gross all right let's take quick break i feel like the saints are everything you stand for which is trying yeah yeah i mean fans are having fun this season supposed to try fans are enjoying it all right let's take a great come back and talk about some of the losers of week 17.

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39:27Ethos has also earned strong customer feedback with a 4.8 out of 5-star rating on Trustpilot, based on more than 3 ,000 reviews. Help protect your family with life insurance through Ethos. Get your instant free quote at ethos.com slash sports. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash sports. Application times and rates may vary. Woofs. The woofs. I don't call them losers. I call them woofs. I'm going to go first here. Got to go with the Steelers, right? Woof. That's one of the worst losses. I wish, because on the preview pod, I was like very skeptical. I didn't feel good about them because of the DK thing.

40:09But in retrospect, I should have been more skeptical. holy smokes that offense was unpleasant that's one of the most unpleasant watches I posted a video about this but there was a lot of I don't know if you guys did it on the morning shows a lot of like yeah discussion about how's it and his comments about how like Rogers just wanted to avoid the record and on one hand do I think that Aaron Rogers in some part of his brain was like I do not want to be the final highlight yes I that the way the man thinks yes but the more prevailing thought I have is this is who they've been all year. People are like, oh, wow.

40:44He's, he's, they're really trying to knock it. I'm like, yeah, that wasn't even one of his three fastest time to throws of the season. Yeah. Like the whole, the Steelers offense is get heavy, run the ball, and then one-on-ones to DK. Take out DK. I was so like, we talked about this on the Sunday night live show that we did because because Charlie was trying to tell me that you said that they curtailed their offense in order to, and I was like, I mean, I'm sure she said it, but like, I've heard your take more fleshed out since then. But like, that wasn't the case. Like, it wasn't like we changed, they changed everything.

41:29Like, my position was like, yeah, this is not only this who they are. This is also Miles Garrett. Like, it's not about the record. It's like, do we want to live or not? ah, we got it. Like we chip them every time. And like, yeah, so it sucked. It was ugly. This offense is not pretty. It's not fun. It's not good. Everything is predicated around DK Metcalf. He wasn't there and it just looked terrible. Losing Washington is sneaky big as well. Darnell Washington, the tight end slash offensive tackle. They got to figure out. Okay. Well, whatever. I'm not going to, I'm going to save the game analysis.

42:08because I'm going to get into it obviously in great detail and I want some time to do that. But it is a very limited offense that has been the case all year long. Rodgers has had games where he's looked a little bit more alive. The Lions game.

42:26But by and large, this is who he is. He does not want to get pressured. And when he is pressured, he has the worst off-target rate in football because he's throwing the ball. It's not because he's inaccurate. It's because he's like, nope. he he nopes out of plays gotta nope out nope uh Mike Tomlin get up this morning if I thought that Aaron Rodgers was coming back and I was surprised that they asked the question because I it seemed like before the year started Aaron Rodgers was pretty clearly not interested in coming back and I don't think anything happened this season that made him think I want to do this again so i i assume he's done right i cannot you have a limited option if you have a guy who can win one-on-one sometimes it works uh and that's the case with dk i mean you know omar khan deserves criticism also for them not adding more players um it's tough because it's kind of one of those like Like we were on live and Dan was criticizing them for going to MVS over and over and over at the end of the game.

43:35But I'm like, okay, yeah, you can criticize Arthur Smith, but this is who Aaron Rodgers, this is how he wants to play as well. This was the same thing in New York. They'd say, wow, why are they? This is his offense. It's his offense. This is how he wants to play. Can they change that in the final week? They have to. They can't. also mike tomlin punting inside brown's territory sir sir sir you can't do that come on also he punted like right at the 50 too yeah i think it's like the next drive and i mean when the the browns punted it back to them when they had one yard they were backed up i also thought that was not the right decision but i guess they because the the steelers moved it all way down the field to get back in position that they could have won.

44:26I was like, what are you doing? Get this one yard or this half. It was less than a yard. Get this half a yard and let's keep it moving. Just sneak with your door. Or at least that would have killed so much more clock. It wouldn't have been. All you needed was that first down or whatever. All right. I'm going to obviously get into Steelers, Ravens in great detail later this week. Who is your woof? Let's go with Baker Mayfield and the Bucs. I mean, I guess it could be all of the Bucs. um but i well yeah i mean okay i mean just because they they've been so and like i looked at it um earlier today because i i've been kind of throwing this around without actually doing the numbers because i thought it was true but um i i just checked it out before i got on with you early in the season they were five and one in the one score games late in the season one in five in the one score games the they had two um losses late in the season and where it was more than one score but like i think honestly this team hasn't really changed that much like they just have been kind of not that good the whole season and like living off of baker magic at the end of games where he would use his athleticism the problem is with that he gives and takes and i could excuse away I looked at all his interceptions.

45:47I could skew away some of them, whereas, like, the one at the end of the Panthers game is like, all right, you anticipated that Mike Evans was going to go when you're scrambling, right? It's the end game. He's scrambling around, and, like, you threw it the wrong way. Okay, like, it's a bad throw. It doesn't happen to the greats, but, like, I can get why that happened. There's another one against the Saints where the receiver just kind of stopped running the dig. So Baker works all the way across the field to the backside dig. Like receiver stops running to dig and he throws an interception. It's like, all right, you shouldn't have thrown it.

46:19But if I'm being generous, I'll say he stopped running. All the rest of them, like the Miami game that we just watched. The Miami game. Yeah, that's what I mean. I guess we're doing winners and wolves from the weekend. So I'm sorry for going back. No, no, it all matters because it is the, like, you know, these have compounded and it's a big part of why they've lost these. These are close games that they're losing. but the Miami game took me all his fault well I mean the sack fumble I guess not having Tristan works matters we don't yeah but like those interceptions they know the interceptions were not pressure yeah he was just forcing it downfield in a lot of a couple of them at least well I'm not okay so he had two interceptions he should have had more yeah and he was one for seven on deep balls and it was just so unnecessary this was a three-point game um you know against carolina too that he i mean that's a defense that can take away the football they have good corners he just needs to play efficient football and not for a problem with part of the problem with tampa underlying all this is they can't run it right bucky irving against the Dolphins who had nine carries for 19 yards.

47:36And when you look at last year to this year, that's the biggest change. They were such a good rushing team last season. Obviously Irving's been hurt, and they've had offensive line injuries, and you had no worse, and your guards are hurt. So there's reasons for it. I'm just saying this is – they can't run it, so you have Baker playing YOLO ball. If I had to sum up what's going on. Defense, I mean, you know, they held him 20 points, but I thought Quinn Ewers was not fooled by some of the things they were throwing at him, which was interesting to see. Yeah. The Todd Bowles blitz happy defense hasn't been effective.

48:16And that was one of the things you were celebrating me early in the year because I had anticipated that they would be good at defense and they were early in the year. Now they stink. so I should be called to the carpet on that poor prediction also because now they're not good and they don't change right so like it's which I mean I get it you want to do with what you think you do best or what you know best but like I have no idea how I'm gonna pick this game one sec yeah we're talking about Baker and we're not Bryce Young is it should be in a wolf because oh my god that was horrible. The Seahawks made that offense look so bad.

48:57Now, the difference is the Bucs were playing the Dolphins. Yeah, so I think I know who you're going to pick. I know who I'm going to pick. No, actually, I truly don't. I need to, I haven't really, I need to say. Yeah, I guess, yeah, I'm leaning Carolina honestly, but we'll see. I like the Panthers defense. They got two really good corners. They are gettable, but I like the corners. I think they have really good corners. And, um, like Mike Jackson is, I feel like probably underappreciated having an awesome season. And Horn is ridiculous on like deep balls as far as taking the ball away. What did we just say Baker did last week through interceptions on these deep balls?

49:40Yeah. Better not try that with JC. Oh, my key for that is just going to be like, please, for the love of God, just throw out the linebacker. Just keep it, keep it short and keep it simple. Do you know what the scariest sound to hear on the factory floor is? Silence. That means something somewhere broke. Production has stopped and now you're paying workers to wait while the team troubleshoots and fixes the problem. Finally, there's a proactive way to reduce equipment downtime thanks to MaintainX. MaintainX is the AI-powered maintenance and asset management system that brings your unplanned maintenance downtime to zero.

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51:21And because Grainger knows safety is always a priority, they're committed to being your partner in protecting both your people and your facilities. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. all right um obviously much more discussion so my wolf is josh allen yeah uh bad game obviously so look it's not entirely it's it's not it's definitely not entirely his fault because every bill's bad game comes down to are you facing a defense second stop explosive runs the eagles could yeah and the bills can't beat you the we talked a little bit about Malik Willis and getting covered. So the Eagles played three times as much cover three as they normally do in this game.

52:07It was, it was a very much like, we know who you are kind of game. And the bills just don't have guys who consistently win outside. That's not Josh Allen's fault. That's Brandon Bean's fault. That said, uh, obviously he had the miss at the end and it was just a flat out, it was kind of, it was kind of like nice that it was just so clearly a miss because no one had to debate it we're all just like yeah it was uh but throughout the game he was sacked five times uh the all four man rush he had an average time to sack of 5.77 seconds which is very long on the season he has a very he he last year he was first in pressure to sack rate this year he's 24th but he has the fifth longest time to sack of the year now again some of that is guys are not getting open for sure but he got to give up on some of these plays because he took some bad sacks in this game obviously the super sack and again you're going back to watch and you're like no one's open it's a bad play whatever but he also needs to play more efficient football because in some like some of these moments he is hurting his team by holding on to the football yeah i agree obviously and this team is like i guess it'd be interesting to see if he like turned up his risk profile because the rushing attack wasn't as explosive as it's been in other situations so like not to excuse him he doesn't need any excuses he's um josh allen he'll be fine and he's going to be explosive that um fumble that they called like i thought that was an incomplete pass honestly his arm was going forward but again he doesn't need these excuses doesn't change the fact that he wasn't good which he still had a chance to win i wonder how we feel about it if he just didn't dirt that pass if we'd feel different about the way that he played.

53:56So I think the most surprising, I guess, which is why you focused on Josh Allen. The most surprising thing was the defense. And I guess part of conditions had something to do with it. Was the defense wasn't abysmal? Which, like, I know. Yeah, the Bills' defense wasn't abysmal. Well, that was a great example of good defense or horrendous Eagles offense. Yeah, right. They gave up some big plays. They did some cool stuff. They do cool stuff. they do uh i guess by babich is the one calling the place that they do some cool stuff and pressures and in the second half i noticed that like they and they've been doing that all year so yeah yeah but yeah i mean the josh allen thing i guess it's it's the he definitely was a wolf this week but like yeah yeah yeah i think the my concern for the bills is not about josh allen it's what happens when you come up against the defense that can stop the run yeah good news is there's not a lot of those in the AFC NFC.

54:52I mean, okay. So right now, who's their most likely playoff standings. I actually haven't looked at the, um, the bills. Cause there's still a little bit. It's, it's so tricky too, because of like some of the guys are sitting. So right now they've got new England. That's great. They can't stop to run. I'm not, I don't mean it's necessarily grand the other side of the ball, but they, they could run the Pittsburgh. Jacksonville, Pittsburgh's locked in the four. So it would be, it's probably New England or Denver, Denver.

55:31It's because, so this, the chargers are resting their starters, right? So Denver, Denver's probably got the, that means they've got the one seat locked, right? Because New England, I haven't paid attention to the AFC side of this as much, but if New England, yeah. So unless New England, even if New England wins against the dolphins, if the Chargers are resting their starters, it's going to be. So you're probably going to get New England. Oh, but then the Chargers, then you bump up to the sixth seed. Sorry, pardon me, if the Chargers lose that game. And then you get Jacksonville, which is a decent run defense, but not as good as Philadelphia, of course.

56:02I mean, honestly, I'd be more concerned about Jacksonville than New England. Yeah. Defensively, we're talking about the, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and yeah, if Trevor Lawrence can, I mean, last week wasn't great, But if he can continue to put up numbers, then you're going to be in a tough spot. Yeah. I like the Jags. Yeah. Which I think they're going to, they'll be fine against the Bills defense. I would assume. You have a very interesting woof that I'm excited to talk about because I mean, I just don't think anyone's talking about this. CJ Stroud. So the Texans have been a really interesting.

56:48Super Bowl contender team that they're out there in this very weird year because you think of the units that you can trust and you can obviously trust their defense and they dodged a couple bullets because their corners both of them left for for a period of time in this game I think were injured but they came back were healthy and were fine so that was a bullet dodge but the the wolf was CJ Stroud and he had an incredible first half where he threw a couple of quarter really Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah, the first quarter he threw two bomb touchdowns. And the rest of the first half was fine. It wasn't great.

57:19It wasn't good, but it was fine. And then from then on, it just was bad. The interceptions were inexcusable and bad. There was, I think, one of the picks, he might have been under a little bit of pressure. But it wasn't like, while the O-line is still not good, it's not one of those situations where we can blame them for putting him in a bad situation. He seemed skittish. I don't know what did it. There was also a play in the second quarter where the offense just seemed disjointed. They ran a screen to the left, but the running back ran it to the right, and all the linemen ran to the left, and C.J.

57:59Stroud just back there looking confused. And, yeah, he couldn't pull it together. They ended up winning the game, but I was still pretty concerned for them headed into the playoffs when their offensive hopes are pinned to CJ Stroud not making those big mistakes. After the first quarter, he averaged, the Texans' offense, not just him, averaged negative 0.3 EPA per play. And I think you saw, there's two things. I have two thoughts on this. One is, I think CJ Stroud's a little bit of a streaky quarterback, just generally. I love him. I think his highs are up there with many, certainly top 10, right?

58:39but he has stinkers here and there where he's kind of inaccurate and he has his ups and downs as a quarterback so that's part of it I also think the Chargers are a bad matchup for them because the defense is really good and the way you beat LA in my opinion is you got to run the ball and they can't run the ball so you know I think it's funny because we were talking about they're kind of like the reverse of the Bills in some ways because I think they've got really good pass catchers. And if they're going up against a bad pass defense with a bad pass rush, they can really take advantage of it. But that's not the Chargers.

59:17Chargers have a soft-dish run defense. They're not good at running the ball. So they're another team where I'm looking at – I think matchup is going to be a big deal in the postseason, right? If they're going up against a team with a better pass defense than run defense, it could cause some issues for them. Yeah, I don't know. It's also been, even in their win streak, there's been some moments or quarters, halves, where the offense has really regressed. The good news is the defense is so sick. It doesn't matter most of the time, and that's going to continue to be the case. I mean, I would say looking across the NFL at all the playoff fields.

1:00:06By the way, next week we're going to rank all the playoff teams. The two units I feel, the three units I feel the best about are the Texans, Seahawks, Eagles defense. I'm putting them above the Broncos. Broncos fans are my screaming. Yeah. You don't have to only do three. You can do four. Throw the Broncos in there. The Broncos team. And I guess, like, the Niners offense I feel really good about. I mean, I find it interesting where you put the Broncos defense outside of that, but I guess it's – I just find it forgettable. Yeah, that's what I was going to – I mean, it's – They're very good, but – It's the over-reliance on man coverage is, like, they do find themselves in situations where they can occasionally be gotten if the pass rush is, if a team max protects or the pass rush doesn't get home on a particular play, they are gettable.

1:01:06It really doesn't feel like there's anything you can do against the Texans. I don't want to do anything. There's some really great defenses in the postseason this year. For sure. All right. Well, as I mentioned, next week, once we know the field, we are going to rank them together. That's going to be fun. I have no idea. I mean, like this Rams loss. Who's the best team in the NFL, Dominique? I don't know, man. Who knows? It'll be fun. We'll figure it out next week. We got to figure this out together because right now I have no idea. I'm looking at the playoffs and I thought it was the Rams. I really did for much of the season.

1:01:47It may not have changed. Maybe not. Yeah, maybe I'll just write it up to some injuries and a Stafford stinker. They fixed their special teams. They got a good front on defense. We're good to go. It's hilarious. I mean, it's sad, but it's funny. How do you do the old special teams coach? And you're like, he didn't do anything. Yeah, I mean, you know all of a sudden, like the coach did block a field goal because they changed coaches. It's very funny. Okay, well, so later this week, I'm going to preview, of course, all the week, the three meaningful Week 18 games with Jordan Rodrigue. We're also going to do fix-it items for the below 500 team.

1:02:19So if you're a fan of the Titans, the Browns, the Raiders, whatever, and you haven't heard your team talked about because obvious reasons we're going to finally talk about them we're going to give you some non-quarterback to-do items for the offseason uh also dominique fox for the show check it out wherever you get your pods i'll be joining uh later this week i presume we haven't talked about the schedule but figure something out uh we might not we might take it off okay well go check it out anyways uh and then on viewer discretion which is my TV pod with David Dennis Jr. We are talking about Fallout.

1:02:54But if you watched Pluribus and you want to watch us discuss the finale, that's available now. I'm all caught up on Pluribus, by the way. We'll discuss it, not on air. Go check out the pod. I will. Wow!

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