Skol With It! JJ McCarthy’s Debut and Winners and Losers

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0:33Welcome back to the MediaCom show featuring Lenny. First Monday Night Football recap edition of 2025. Dominique Foxworth. He's back. He looks thrilled. What a smile. Yeah, you excited to talk some football? Yeah, no, I mean, the routine is back. The fun is back. We get to talk football. And yeah, it was, I don't know. It just makes me happy seeing you and hearing your bad Lenny jokes. it's great we don't do Lenny jokes on Tuesdays for the commenters who have been angry about that long-time listeners know um Dominique we're gonna do we're gonna talk about the game and then we're gonna do winners and woofs at the end uh this is like kind of the perfect game to unleash terrible takes I feel like because I mean week one is this is the expression week one is a liar and I feel like, you know, we're already getting some overreactions and, but I don't, to me, this felt like two very young, very inexperienced quarterbacks still feeling their way out, but everybody's already jumping to conclusions about both of them.

1:39I just think, you know, both sides deserve patience, both good and bad. Yeah. I mean, I think you're right, but I also think that the signs are pretty obvious maybe i don't want to be the overreactor that you are lamenting but i do think that there's you can draw a lot from this yeah i think you could draw i mean especially after like um giving a little deeper dive into the plays like there are more causes for concern than i think i thought after the game immediately last night and also i think the McCarthy stuff is pretty cool. Like the, the psychological, uh, whatever way you want to evaluate those things to be able to belch back in that situation is a real thing.

2:25Let's start with the Viking side. The, uh, winners of course, uh, for three quarters, people were panicking about this offense. They, it was interesting, um, sort of early on that. Well, anyways, we'll get to the, the first side. Sorry. So the early on, it looked really, really bad frankly like they weren't able to run the ball well jj mccarthy it felt like um was just playing slow honestly and he was kind of late on throws like guys were getting open and he just wasn't seeing it or he was late to throw um he had a really bad interception coming out of the half where he was late to throw the out and they read it all the way it was uh nishan right i think and for jaylen johnson on that one and then the fourth quarter happened and drive one uh drive two drive three okay so wait actually there's i think like it was historic right like the the comeback yes first quarterback to overcome a 10 point deficit in his debut in the fourth quarter okay there's a lot of caveats there since steve young in 1985.

3:27um let's just talk about that for that fourth quarter and what we saw from the vikings offense because what like what do you think do you think it was just jj playing better do you think it was the play calling do you like what what struck out to you about this comeback from the Vikings offense side? Yeah, I think it definitely was a combination of multiple things, which is the boring answer, but I'd start with, they started to be able to run the ball a little bit more effectively, which took the pressure off of them. The defense hung in there all night, which again, took the pressure off of me.

3:55It just speaks to how the situation matters so much for these quarterbacks. And then of course, um, Kevin O 'Connell is probably, I would say maybe the most respected, uh, offensive, uh, particularly quarterback centric like offensive mind that there is in football right now and the Bears were doing a lot of man coverage in the second half in particular which maybe they did it early on also but the successful plays so many of the successful plays were a result of man coverage and that's pretty easy if you got man coverage you know the read is 18. It's not it's not that hard what route is he running throw it over towards him and that's where it seemed like he had a lot of success and even ran the ball which again man coverage it's the right thing to do.

4:36Yeah. Dennis Allen coming over from New Orleans plays more man coverage, cover two man in particular, which is not something you see as much of in the NFL. It was a cover two man look that they got the the go ball or to Aaron Jones coming out of the backfield. You got a match. You got the matchup you want. Right. With that look. Cover two man is a great look to scramble against. You got a couple of J.J. J.J. McCarthy scrambles. And to your point, J.J. McCarthy or J.J. Justin Jefferson, two J.J.'s. versus man coverage is always a good answer um i don't put that like on allen necessarily i don't think like it was he took like a super flawed approach per se but um they were definitely able to find answers for it the run game is is to me the biggest story of the fourth quarter like when you look at those three drives they all start with explosive runs um the first run the one that ends with the fastball touchdown to Justin Jefferson, starts with a super explosive run, and then Jordan Mason will get to in a second.

5:41Fantastic in pass protection on that throw to Justin Jefferson. Second drive, again, a great run, and then you get the PI and then the Aaron Jones vertical route. And then third drive, again, great runs, nice runs, screen, zone read, touchdown. this is exactly what the Vikings like wanted their offense to be it just was just in the fourth quarter we saw the first three quarters I really believe their offseason they're improving the run game was massive priority for them they weren't good at it last year the run blocking was so they completely redid their interior of their offensive line and I think it's they knew JJ needed it right coming out of a Michigan program where like they ran the ball way more than throwing it and knowing you want to play action off of it and when a run game wasn't clicking the offense looked bad and again some of that is McCarthy himself but I don't think it's a coincidence that yeah the entire thing looked worlds better once they were able to run the ball effectively in the fourth quarter yeah I mean and I think that obviously that there's so many more data points that we're going to get going forward but for a very first start I don't know that you could ask for or expect more from a quarterback then or I'm not sure short of like uh Cam Newton type of intro to the league I'm not sure how you could feel better about it given that you tested one of the hardest things that I think there is to test and it's kind of the mental toughness and confidence that a player like he was bad and then capped off his bad with a pick six and I was starting to pull the cover up covers up then like yeah we're gonna call it tonight I gotta get up early for get up and then he just started balling and I and you're right like I mean I made this the same point it was also a lot of the help around him but being able to bounce back from that and play well and not be hesitant and and be confident is tough they were more aggressive at the end of the game I you know and I don't think the offensive struggles in the first three quarters I would not put on Kevin O 'Connell like oh he was constraining like J.J.

7:47was missing throws he was late on throws there were opportunities downfield but it did I thought strike me as very impressive to your point that the fourth quarter comeback it wasn't like he was just dinking and dunking and I know the run game was really good but it wasn't just like wow he popped that screen for there was one great screen but for the most part like he was actually throwing downfield um i thought the ball to aaron jones was really nice uh he had a couple of really nice throws to uh the fastball the touchdown i talked about earlier that was a great i mean he's really good at driving it over the middle of the field i think and i think aikman mentioned this in the game the touch is still a work in progress right because so much of this play action offense they really want you be kevin o 'connell and ben johnson they want their quarterbacks to be able to layer balls over the middle of the field and And that was an issue.

8:33And I think it's part of the reason why, again, Aikman mentioned this. They were batting balls. Some of that was also just he was taking too long. But, you know, this wasn't like a fake offense in the fourth quarter. He was making aggressive, accurate throws in high leverage situations. And, of course, you want him to get to a point where he can operate an offense even if the running game isn't there, where it's just – and it's not play action focused. But it's his first start. So I think the best thing you can do coming out of first start is like, yeah, that's that's something we can build on.

9:06And or we like that. And he's not going to he's not going to beat us. You know, and I think he checked all those boxes. He has something you can build on. And he's definitely not going to be the problem. And he has all the like physical abilities, like the level of athleticism for NFL quarterbacks is out of this world at this point, because J.J. McCarthy looked incredibly fast. but then I started looking around the league. Yeah. I started looking around the league. I was like, yeah, actually like, I mean, it's kind of a lot of them in the league now. There's so few traditional pocket passers. I can't remember who was on the, Oh, it was Evan Williams was the Packers safety who picked off Jared Goff.

9:45And he was talking about, you know, Micah's impact and, and setting up the interception. And he was like, you know, and Goff is like, I think he said, he was like, we know he's a non-mobile quarterback. And I was like, non-mobile quarterback is such a funny, a funny way to put it. There's so few of them around the league, but yeah, his scrambling ability, both quarterbacks will get to Caleb side. You really saw them use their legs to good effect in this one. I will say like to go back to the run game again and kind of like moving forward. To me, that's just something I'm going to be looking at in every game is like, okay, like, can they continue building on this?

10:19Can they continue improving running the football? I thought Jordan Mason, who they traded for from San Francisco. I remember liking that trade because the advanced numbers liked Jordan Mason in San Francisco. The NGS has that rush yards over expected stat, which tries to look at actually a running back's contributions independent of blocking. And in this game, he was the only back on either side who had positive rush yards over expected. He had plus 15. But I felt like, again, in the fourth quarter, he hit a couple of really nice duo runs. You just saw him. He has like really good vision and burst going downhill.

10:52they were putting two tight ends on the field and the bears were matching that with nickel and like that's the world that kevin o 'connell wants to live in i think so that i i think his performance was another really encouraging thing for this vikings team early on yeah i mean and it always to me at least comes down to like um you want to be able to do one thing well to start with but you also want to be flexible and be able to attack in a number of different ways and that's the first way If you can choose anything that you want your offense to be good at, running the ball is the one that I think most coaches would say, give us that.

11:28If I know I can do that, then we can build other things off of it because it forces the defense. To your point, Dennis Allen wants to play two-man. You can't play two-man if they're running the ball against you. So a big part of the reason why I keep like, I'm kind of like stressing the run games is because the contrast was so stark. And that's not to absolve Caleb, but I mean once a friend of the show Michael Jr. tweeted I think the fourth ready was like well once I can run the ball and once I can't and like it's kind of like a pretty decisive factor in this game because both quarterbacks had their ups and downs JJ was clutch at the end but um the Bears on their other side because both teams were clearly wanted to get better at it right both teams it was a huge storyline offseason invested so much in their interior offensive lines and And Dominique, the Bears couldn't run the ball for anything in this one.

12:22DeAndre Swift only had three successful runs out of 17, which is really bad. The context there, though, that matters is the Vikings run defense, I think, is much better than Chicago's still. But that was something that really jumped out to me watching this Bears team. And I think it was. We can talk about what Caleb did well and what he did poorly. but I feel like when I think about like watching this Ben Johnson offense and thinking, okay, like why aren't guys like wide open? Why are, whereas like the, you know, like in Detroit, it felt like constantly they were in like third and short and guys were wide open on play action.

12:57We can't do any of that if you can't run the ball well, and they just could not run the ball at all. Yeah. I mean, that's going to be a challenge for Ben Johnson to, and it may be just because the Vikings are so good, but to be able to design an effective running game or to be able to figure out another way to be effective. And this is like one of the differences between coaches, or teams who have a good idea or who actually are like effective at adapting from style to style. That's what we see. And obviously the Bears are nowhere near a dynasty, but that's what we see from the best teams that are able to put together dynasties in football is that you look at them from year to year to year and they're winning in a different way.

13:35And so Ben Johnson might have to find a different way to make a productive offense. And the opposite version of that is like the Dolphins. It's like they, once, once that first kind of wrinkle got extinguished, they haven't really found a way to put anything consistent together since. Yeah. It is interesting when like all these like hot young coaches change teams and you realize, okay, well, a lot of them are coming from teams with a really good offensive lines and really good run games. What does it look like when they go somewhere new? Like I thought we're not going to talk about them, but I thought the Jags run game under Liam Cohen looked really good I just watched it this morning and that was an offensive line I had question marks the Bears run game didn't there's like a litany of reasons for that again I cannot underestimate under I cannot overstate the Vikings defense which I want to talk about in a second um but yeah I thought that hurt them I so you know just to start with I mean what a roller coaster for Bears fans the first scripted drive like what was going through your head after the first like in the first quarter watching Caleb Williams before things went off the rails okay yeah this is generally like because it wasn't even just that they were moving the ball it was that it seemed like he was going against some of his worst um instincts it's like let's scramble around when the play downfield is not doesn't look clean let me scramble around till something opens up but he's like nope it's not over it's not open i'll check it down and that was like super encouraging but it didn't last obviously because he started to revert back when he got in trouble and the pressure mounted he started to revert back and then of course on on those early drives I guess it was a it was the second his second drive I guess that he did that magical thing on the sideline like that thing is so enticing that allows us all to convince ourselves that he's going to be great even though some of the more mundane things he struggles with

15:34The up and down nature of his accuracy is really hard to wrap my brain around a bit. Yeah, you said he can make the hardest throws in the world look routine, and then he's missing easy throws over the middle of the field, it felt like. That throw to Odunze, I mean, to generate that kind of torque on the move, he looked like mariano rivera like it was crazy and then there was a um it was actually i commented on this because it was right after jj kind of laid out the out that got picked because it was slow and and jj's got a fine arm but he doesn't have a i wouldn't say like his arm is not like super strong and then caleb hit like a deep like it was like an oppo hash deep over to i can't remember who it was but i was watching that like god damn like even some of the throws that were dropped on the final drive were unbelievable but it was like every other throw it would be unbelievable throw like tight window seam ball and then just like a spray and then um Deontay Lee posted that it kind of reminded him watching Trevor Lawrence at times and that kind of triggered something in me where I I was like oh I could kind of it's actually not a not a bad comp where there's really really impressive throws and then just scattershot accuracy at times because it was the accuracy It wasn't like I was watching him thinking, wow, he's really holding on to the ball too long, the way I was with JJ early.

17:02Or I was thinking, he's forcing it. It was just like sprays. I think that's what was so odd about it. Yeah, and that's not something that we anticipated for him coming in. And that's not something like that wasn't one thing we were worried about. We were worried about a number of things with him. And being able to consistently hit your target wasn't the thing that I thought was going to be an issue. But it was really bad. Like the accuracy was very bad. And that while it didn't kill them, it did cost them because the situation in the game would have changed. Had he hit some of those things earlier, they got a different lead.

17:40That creates a different amount of pressure. Then the run game may not matter. Like those things. That's what I was thinking. As Troy was pointing out that there were some plays downfield that he was turning down and he wasn't even taking them. I was at the time was like oh good for him like it's fine they he'll do that eventually but then we get to the end of the game it's like you only got 17 points when it felt clearly like they were dominating the game and only 10 at that point offensively I just was like man those those are the things that you want back right and it's and you can't get them back it's too late yeah there was a throw he missed um up the left sideline that would have been a walk-in touchdown I can't remember if it was a dunes a or who it was but um it was just odd honestly i don't know how else to put it um commit made that ridiculous catch up the seam where that like that was a not not a catchable ball it was a number of them they're probably like five or six of them that were big plays that they missed in his defense and and this can kind of get us to the i so the accuracy thing is kind of irrespective of this but when i started off by saying like week one is a liar and like, you know, you got to, who are they playing?

18:52What does it mean? I really think the Vikings defense is one of the best in the NFL still. You know, we did our top 10 off defenses pod and I still had them. I think I had them fifth or sixth. I can't remember. They looked the part in this. Like it was actually, you and I were texting. I was confused in the first quarter because it was like so vanilla. Like Flores was kind of just playing Caleb straight up. four man rushes no weird pressures and sims and creepers and you know insane early down blitzes um and i don't know what if that was him saying let's let me take ben johnson by surprise because he thinks i'm going to do all this crazy stuff or hey we've got these new two defensive tackles javon hardgrave who i thought was quite good in this and john allen but it didn't work and then in the second half he blitzed him on 55 percent of dropbacks uh which was very funny yeah i wonder if like I'm sure different coaches approach this differently and this might be worth at some point talking to some coordinators about how they approach their their game but I think that some of it also was like I'm fine for this first half to be information gathering as long as it doesn't kill us and like what are they trying to do and the thing is whatever Ben Johnson I assume goes into the locker room after the first half and is like we don't have to change anything like we just have to hit these passes, you know, because they felt good about what was going on without scoring a bunch of points.

20:18But they're coming out of the Vikings are coming out of locker room like, all right, this is what they want to do. This is how they're going to attack us. Now we know. And I imagine that I always remember this about the Patriots is they'd save a blitz. They'd save something. They'd save a blitz or they'd save an offensive play. They'd save something for the key moment that you hadn't seen all game long. Because once you go through the course of the game, it's like yeah we've had 10 third downs I've already called my best third down play 10 times and so once you get to the final most important third down I already know kind of as a coordinator like all right we've had 10 third downs we were successful against cover two twice we like were successful against cover three the one time we blew it was when they blitzed this important third down they're going back to that blitz but if you're Brian Flores you're like they come out they're like all right we know what they're going to do and then you come with the reaction so like it might have been strategic or i guess i mean either way it was strategic but i was considering that as a possibility that's interesting yeah i i'm interested in that's definitely one to monitor i think as the season goes along because he's so creative and chaotic and but they did invest right in that interior of the defensive line um and i thought they played well i mean uh hargrave and allen according next gen stats each had six pressures harvard have hargrave had two quick pressures which is basically if you at defensive tackle if you're getting a quick pressure the play's over right although i think some of those might have been caleb's like he had a few houdini again to his credit right that was probably the best thing he did in this game um like look like that was kind of my other big takeaway i would guess from this is the vikings went into this offseason saying we need to get more physical at the line of scrimmage interior of the offensive line so we can run the ball defensive tackles so that we can get you know penetration on the inside and I thought both sides the investments looked successful early on but I guess more so like relative to the competition right because I if you're I was I mean the face I was making wasn't because I disagree with you I completely agree with you it just you said something that sparked something else in my mind was not only do they not they've invested in the d-line they don't have the cornerback talent, I think, to be aggressive.

22:36But another thing that came to mind is, even if you're getting quick pressure, like, of course, pressure with four is like, run the ball, but on defense. Like, it's an obvious thing. If you can do that, that's fine. But what I hadn't considered before is, it's the chaos that you create in the mind of a quarterback, particularly a young quarterback. And so if you're, even if you're only rushing four, if you're showing blitz, if you're threatening blitz, if you are blitzing sometime, there's just like something about that that I think I could imagine. I hadn't been under center in that situation, but I can imagine that it speeds you up and it freaks you out a little bit, even if, so it's like, and you come into this game thinking we're going to Vikings, they do all this crazy stuff, just showing it, threatening it in a way that he was unwilling, that Flores was unwilling to do in the first half, I think can freak out a quarterback.

23:26100%. It freaks out older quarterbacks too. seen it so often with him uh over the years um yeah i think um come out of this feeling like the vikings are definitely contenders in terms of like playoff they're in the you know i would green bay seems like the big bad and we're going to talk about them after the break i think they're pretty head and shoulders above right now but vikings defense is still very good and you know the question mark with jj mccarthy was just like can he just be above average right like this was always it was never just jj mccarthy we don't need a jayden daniels type rookie season um it's you know you don't want to overrate one quarter versus three quarters of very below average but he showed it to you at least so i think that's encouraging very encouraged by the ability to run the ball in the fourth quarter as well on the flip side i you know i i just i've said this about the bears all off season i do think it needs some time the run game i really believe if the run game clicks then ben johnson can make life easier for caleb williams he's got to figure that out right um and you hope williams accuracy will be more consistent kind of coming off of that but hope more important than that you hope that he won't have to make tight window throws because guys will be wide open so in the way that we often saw in detroit um i just feel like you know this is a very very good defense i know it's not encouraging for sure the way he finish this game but I do think context matters right like I think a lot of quarterbacks are going to look very bad against this defense yeah I think that's fair like we aren't gonna um make our determination on Cameron Ward after he went up against the Broncos like that's it's a tough matchup I think I'm recording my show right after this one and we decided on some of the topics I'm not sure but I really think that we are I like to explore just like this idea of quarterback a lot more of what makes a successful quarterback and how we do like evaluate them because there's something about the there's some bias that maybe you know there's a name for this whatever psychological bias that comes with the things that you can see or that feel tangible because there's so many more important things I think to the development of the quarterback but we get so infatuated with the things that we can see and measure which is always like the explosive arm talent and and this kind of dovetails a little bit with um cam newton second cam newton reference but how cam newton made that distinction at one point between like game changers and game managers is like i think of that less as a distinguishing factor as much as it's like stages in quarterback development and there is a like most guys are managing the game for most of the game and that's the thing that Caleb has struggled with is like, he has the game change your ability, but he's got to be able to manage the game and then throw the ball to your guys.

26:24So like all this overthinking and everything and, and trying to evaluate their psychological position and how physically talented they are. It's like, throw it where it's supposed to go and things might feel a lot differently. Yeah. I mean, that's what Jane Daniels did so consistently his rookie season and it was you know the big plays the scrambles the deep balls were the cherry on top not the entire sunday um okay let's take a quick break we're gonna talk about the packers i'll do the packers right after the break it's my first winner right now o'reilly auto parts gets you back to savings pick up select royal purple fuel system additives buy one get one free plus receive four times oh rewards points stop by your local o'reilly auto parts store or shop online at O 'ReillyAuto.com.

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28:26The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. All right, we're back. The Green Bay Packers are a wagon. Did you do a Super Bowl pick for ESPN.com? I did. Did they ask you for one? I'm not as important as you. They might have. I just never checked. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that's more likely that you just don't respond to emails. So I had the Packers coming out of the NFC. I respond to your emails. Sometimes.

29:07I felt pretty good about that, watching them this weekend. Ooh, just the balance on both sides. I don't even know which side to talk about. We can talk about the offense. We can talk about the defense. I mean, they just looked so dominant week one. And we can talk about, I mean, the defense, you know, obviously this is a big story with Micah Parsons trade. It looked exactly like we thought it would in terms of like the impact that he had on the entire defense. I mean, you talk about, you're talking about JJ McCarthy and like psychological did not, did it not feel like the entire defense was like, hell yeah, we got Micah Parsons on third down.

29:42Like there, there was just like a level of juice to this unit. Oh, I'm sure I'm showing up early on Wednesday and I'm staying late. Like I feel more like invigorated as a player if as soon as Micah Parsons shows up. And I think that one of the things that points that I was making this morning on TV is like how it's so obvious, like J.J. McCarthy, things feel different in Minnesota because the quarterback showed up. defensively we don't do it as often because it's not like a clear one guy position sort of thing but there are players that are so good that they have a quarterback's level of impact on the defense and the magical thing about some of the best quarterbacks in football is it doesn't matter what play you call they can make stuff happen and I was just thinking about how Micah Parsons is going to make so many people so much money.

30:43Like Jeff Halfley, get your head coaching resume ready because Micah going to make you a coach. Whoever's playing in the secondary, you're about to get two, three free interceptions, and there are going to be two or three bombs that would have been caught that won't be caught because Micah's in the backfield terrorizing the quarterback. It's a great place to be in life. How good did Lucas Van Ness look in this game? lined up inside um their cheetah package or rashaun gary opposite him edren cooper flying down like everybody is gonna eat uh that much better with his presence i think they're still unlocking to how they use them there was one rep where they lined him up over the center he got doubled uh that's something i think we're gonna see a little bit more often just moving him around different alignments um i will say and this has something to do with micah but also is kind of what it's more about the early downs i mean and this connects to what i was saying earlier with regards to the bears and the vikings the lions are a similar offense where like they kill you because of the run past conflict and they could not run the ball in this game last year they had the shortest distance to go on third down of any team so the run was always on the board um this this game they you know it were like 22nd or something and third down distance to go and it was really like it started up front um they only averaged 1.23 yards before contact per carry which was 27th league wide they only had one game last year below two was not as bad as that and that was also against the packers by the way who had a good run defense last year i slept on um somehow despite losing the greatest run defender of all time and kenny clark this packers i feel bad i like kenny clark and i don't i want to slander him that's that's your fault jerry jones it's your fault um but no the run defense was extraordinary in this and you know stop the run have some fun played out exactly as they thought it would yeah i don't know if i who i want to give more credit to or what i want to focus on is the line's inability to run the ball or the packers ability to yeah because like i don't want to thing yeah yeah i don't want to short shrift the the Packers and I know the history of the Lions ability to run the ball but in watching that game it didn't feel it didn't feel like the same old Lions which I mean I know Ragnow is gone and Ben Johnson of course but it didn't seem like the same old Lions and I think that's important because like and I know you know this because you follow this stuff closer than anybody I know, but like Penesul is a great tackle, but Penesul has like, if people are going to be critical of him, it's about just straight drop back pass protection.

33:41And to the point that you made before, that team, we revere their offensive line, but their offensive line is so rarely in that situation where it's like, hey, you're down by a bunch of points, you don't have a two-way go, like we know you got to pass. And And if they can't run the ball, we're going to be in a world of hurt. It's just true of a lot of the really great offenses around. There's very few offenses in the NFL right now that are really good when they can't run the ball. And even the great quarterback offenses, the Ravens, the Bills, they're both really good at running the football. So it's not just like, wow, the quarterback's doing everything.

34:25Is it Burrow? Like, I guess the, I mean, they weren't good last week. Yeah, I know. But generally, I guess I was just trying to think of like last year. Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess Mahomes was great on third and long, but like that offense wasn't good though. Like you wouldn't say that offense is good. It's just hard to win in today's NFL if you can't do that. And the Lions couldn't. And I think, yeah, you make a really good point. Like let's, that's a great, like, let's see next week. Do they look, let me look at who they're playing. does the Packers offense deep I think the Packers defense they're playing the Bears okay so the Bears you saw that run defense struggle at the end in the fourth quarter against Minnesota this is a good opportunity for them to get right I think the Green Bay run defense is for real though I do I think the Green Bay still has weaknesses in the secondary but I think past rush and the run defense are going to be good to cover up some of that um offensively like it just kind of looked like it did when it was rolling last year like basically the same uh the one thing I want to get your thought on again this is about the lions as well it felt like matt lafleur just had such a handle on the lions coverages i mean they were just destroying them in single high in this game and the lines didn't really change it up do you worry about the loss of aaron glenn there perhaps because we talk so much about ben johnson but i'm watching them and thinking god they got to do something because they are just getting carved like guys who are open against this defense yeah I mean I think that it's hard to pinpoint exactly I think obviously Z'Darrius Smith in like an effective Aiden Hutchinson will change the way that these things work out and also Carlton Davis was amazing last season um them not having that same level of of play hurts them um and I I guess what are the changes that you want to make and looking at the way that they played last year?

36:22Like, I don't really think of, and this is not meant as a slight to, to Aaron Glenn, but it wasn't like they were switching up coverages and super confusing. Like that wasn't their style. So like, that's why I'm sure there are other things that he brought to it that I am unaware of, but like, it didn't feel like in that moment. So like prep leading up, preparing guys for route concepts and preparing guys for all the things that you do leading up. Like they could be missing that for Aaron Glenn. But it didn't feel like they were missing the in-game decision making from Aaron Glenn. Because I don't think of him as like the guy who is he's not like Brian Flores, I guess.

37:03Yeah, no, I agree with that. I will say the pressures or lack thereof is I think was the big thing that stuck. I mean, it felt like Jordan Love constantly. Some of that was because I think their play action stuff was working so well and they were keeping in bodies to pass protect. But you really thought with Hutchinson back, they'd be able to get to the quarterback a little bit more than they did in this one. And that was a big factor in this, the contrast on both sides and like pressure. I mean, it didn't, you know, I know I was like you and I, I remember both had the Packers in our top 10 defenses and we were a little bit nervous about it.

37:35Obviously, you feel a lot better about it with parts and showing up. I had the Lions, though, also as a top 10 defense. And now that's the one I'm questioning a bit because I really didn't. The lack of pressure was just very jarring in this. Yeah. I mean, and again, it's week one. So as you said, it lies. But yeah, we'll see. It's also possible they're just going up against a juggernaut. And it's like, yeah, I think that's huge. I think. Yes. OK. Speaking of juggernauts, your first winner. Justin Fields yeah that was pretty cool by the way what did I was glued to this game Steelers Jets um and I'm uh exercising my right to pick a winner on a team that didn't win because I think relative to expectations I thought Justin Fields was incredible sensational yeah there are um obviously different locker rooms feel differently but I feel like that's one of the losing locker rooms that feels better or like almost good is like they I guess they're disappointed because they gave away a game that they should have won they would have felt better but that the huge question and all the tape in the offseason was like Justin Fields struggling being inaccurate and us talking about this team was going to be like a an old school like wing T run the ball quarterback like he was hitting people downfield with the ball and making decisions doing the things that we thought that he couldn't do so that was awesome for him um well kind of cuts to the theme of this show which is they could also they ran the ball really well in this one and it made everything easier right they speaking of the lion's brain drain tanner angstrand comes over as the offensive coordinator i was really interested in seeing what this marriage would look like because i wanted to see if he just tried to copy paste the ben johnson offense not at all uh justin fields was mostly even the play action stuff they were getting to it was fields in the gun, mostly doing little flash fakes or, you know, they had RPOs for him, which is kind of not a big part of the Lions offense.

39:43Obviously a ton of zone reads. He had a ton of design carries. He had some scrambles as well. He looked extremely comfortable in this offense. Maybe the most comfortable I've seen him in an offense in the NFL. And that's crazy for week one. It's crazy given everything that we heard this off season, but I like he was really good inside the pocket. When he was kept clean, he was 10 for 11 for 114 yards and a touchdown. He was throwing to the middle of the field. He was accurate. And then when there was pressure, he made plays outside of structure throwing that I've not like, no, it's just not, it was not, and not, and I don't mean like bombs.

40:25I mean like 10, 15 yards. You know, it just, I was really impressed by both his performance in this game. And then also what we saw from Tanner angstrain, who I thought was fantastic. Yeah. I mean, it's funny how all of this stuff is like, I mean, not funny. We have to bring context to all of the things that we evaluate, but if we're going to look at Justin Fields and all his issues in his career so far, a lot of it can be attributed to surrounding situations. If we hadn't, if we don't have that context or previous information, like what we saw from him would have been one of the more exciting things of the weekend, you know?

41:03And I was thinking that same thing when I was evaluating Caleb was like, let me try to erase last year from my memory because you add that together and it feels like it skews it in a way that's not helpful. But I think it's hard to do with just about anybody. But in this situation, Justin, I'd be on a high horse if I were Aaron Glenn or anybody over there in the Jets organization because it felt competent and it also felt repeatable I think is the most important thing and that again goes to coaching around the talent that you have it's like that didn't feel fluky well a big part of the reason why it felt repeatable is I think the offensive line is legit uh and even that was what was my big because when they lost to Olivera Tucker I was like oh god this is the whole premise of this team was like ground and pound um I thought the interior played really well in this one against a very tricky dude, Armin Membu, the right tackle.