Week 5 in the NFL: Drake Maye's Moment, No More Unbeatens, and Bummed-Out Bottom Dwellers

0:00Diante Lee:Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Sheil Kapadia. Week five, Sunday in the books. We just got finished watching the Patriots upset the Bills. I've got Diante Lee from the Ringer here with me. We've got three big questions from Sunday. We're going to talk about which fan base should be the most excited about how its quarterback played. We're going to talk about which previously unbeaten team should be more concerned with its first loss, the Eagles or the Bills, and which fan base should be most bummed by the way its team played on Sunday. Because Deontay, I got to think there are going to be some fan bases who are going to maybe be checking out Saturdays a little bit more and looking at those draft prospects and thinking about, all right, where are we picking again?

0:43Diante Lee:Because today was a bad day for a lot of teams in the NFL. 100%. I feel like when I was doing the power rankings last year, it got really easy, probably around Halloween, because you could kind of really see where the tiers are separating. It feels like we're getting there a lot earlier in NFL seasons than we ever have before. For teams letting you know within three to four weeks, like, hey, not a contender over here. Don't got to worry about us anymore. Focus your attention elsewhere. And like you said, this was a week where I think a lot of teams are starting to trend in that direction. Yeah, hang the banner.

1:14Diante Lee:Don't pay attention to us anymore. It's all good. You don't need to talk about us anymore. So we'll talk about some of those teams. We'll talk about the three big questions from week five when we come back on the Ringer NFL show. This is the Ringer NFL show presented by FanDuel. And if you're betting on the NFL, FanDuel is the place to do it. They've got everything. Same game parlays, quick bets for when you want to jump in live, and your way so you can set your own lines. The app's fast, it's easy to use, and best of all, when you win, you get paid out instantly. Download the FanDuel app or go to fanduel.com slash Ringer NFL to get started.

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2:31All right.

2:31Diante Lee:Three big questions from week five with Deontay. Question number one, Deontay, which fan base should be most excited about how its quarterback played on Sunday? The Patriots, the Bucs, or the Seahawks? So I probably could have expanded this to more, but I mean, we had Drake May, big time performance on Sunday night. Patriots go to Buffalo as big underdogs and beat the Bills. Baker Mayfield was terrific once again in Tampa's win over Seattle. And then Sam Darn, a losing effort. We can talk about that. Throws the interception at the end. But I thought he was fantastic once again. So which fan base right now?

3:08Diante Lee:The group chats are just like, oh, my gosh, it's so nice to have this guy. We love this guy. Let's order this jersey for our kids. Who's feeling it right now? You know, like, I don't want to be a coward and answer this from, like, a bunch of different perspectives, right? So I will say my overall answer is actually Sam Darnold, because when you consider free agency spending and what they spent on Darnold and what they decided not to spend on with Geno Smith. And I think that I'm going with that answer because it is multifold. You have to think about the quarterback you've got and how they're playing and then what you ultimately allow to leave the door and how that guy is at his next stop.

3:44But if we're talking like strictly within fan bases, right? Like if I were a Seahawks, a Buccaneers or a Patriots fan, I think the answer then would probably be Drake May. Right. Because I think that these first five weeks have kind of been a culmination of some of the things we were talking about on the last iteration of the show in the 2024 season. Right. And Drake May showing a lot of strong potential, even though the Patriots weren't winning. And then you finally get in this primetime opportunity and he looked like the best quarterback on the field. Like, and that's just not something you typically say about, you know, a game that involves Josh Allen is that he's not the best quarterback on the field.

4:18And the fact that he did this, I don't want to be over the top. But I mean, as far as like MVP outside odds, like you have to be thinking through the first five games of the year that like this guy's playing quarterback as well, if not better than anybody else in the league.

4:33Diante Lee:Yeah, I thought the biggest thing on Sunday night was like we talked to Nate Tice about this last week where I watched last week and I was like, Josh McDaniels is like, this is my show, you know, just operate my offense. And that's kind of how May was playing. Not every snap. I understand there's always going to be times when he creates, but in this game against the bills, it was like, all right, that balance between point guard and playmaker. I need to dial up the playmaker in this game because I'm going up against Josh Allen and not all the play calls are working. And I thought he was incredible doing that.

5:03Diante Lee:How many times did he roll to it? You know, skate pressure up the middle, roll to his right and made a play. It felt like he completed every pass when he was doing that, the play on that last series. I mean, Patriots fans are going to be losing their minds about that play where he's getting dragged down and somehow his knee does not touch the ground and he completes a pass to Stefan digs. And then he has another great pass in the Turkey hole against cover two on the right side. There drives them into field goal range. So yeah, I think, I think we're saying like who's losing their minds the most about their quarterback right now after week five, I'm with you.

5:38Diante Lee:It's Drake May, but man, that Darnold Mayfield game was no joke either. 100%. And you know, it's funny, for all the conversations that we've had on and off the microphone, right, about who Baker Mayfield is as a quarterback and what he might not be, I think specifically was like Sam Darnold, right? What he was over the first end of his career, what he was and wasn't in Carolina, and now what we've seen in Minnesota and now here in Seattle. like we're talking about guys that have been written off at different points in their career as being fringe starter types and now look like quality guys that when you start looking at the playoff picture in the nfc these are two teams because of their offenses that you have to really consider if you're at the top of your division right now thinking i don't want to have to see this team and i definitely don't want to have to travel you know to seattle or to tampa bay to have to see either of these guys in a playoff environment because they've been playing so strong and Sunday was another example of that.

6:33Diante Lee:Those were the two best offensive performances by, I think actually behind the Colts maybe, the second and third best offensive performances by a team this season, the Bucs and the Seahawks going up. I mean, it felt like the ball didn't hit the ground for either guy and it was just, what, seven touchdowns in a row at one point in that game. I want to talk about both of them, but I have to say, you know, like Sam Darnold, for like you said, people have listened to the show, No, no said. I'm like, all right, everybody settled down a little bit on Sam Darnold. I thought that in the off season, I thought this isn't going to work.

7:06Diante Lee:I've already said that was wrong. I thought this might've been the best game of his career. I mean, he was 28 for 34, 341 yards, four touchdowns. Again, had the interception at the end. It bounces off of Bucks players helmet, bad, bad spot for that. But he had like no margin for error. And what I liked Deontay is this wasn't just like, all right, you know, we're going to run, run, run, and then do a play action and chuck it down. Yeah. This was like, no, you need to create, all right. You're being pressured. He had the touchdown pass where he's being pressured. He escapes, throws it to the left side.

7:39Diante Lee:I thought he was making high degree of difficulty throws. He was creating this entire game. Again, the ball's not hitting the ground. Do you know what quarterback leads the NFL success rate EPA per pass play through the first five weeks of the season? You can probably guess. I mean, it's gotta be Sam. I know this because I've been looking right. I've been looking week over week. And you try to, you know, extrapolate various particular weeks. They're like, OK, against this defense, how do you look against, you know, the entire breadth of the season? And they've been top five, top eight, top three, no matter what week or what week range you're working with.

8:12It's been it's been blowing me away, honestly, to see how he's operated. And like you said, I mean, we know what Sam Darnold is for the most part. Right. This is a guy that is an ambitious passer. So you usually expect if you turn on the Sam Darnold game and his team has 30 points, hey, maybe, you know, he ripped a couple deep balls and then there were a lot of bad incompletions that maybe didn't get picked off. Maybe he took a couple sacks, but he never changed his approach. I looked at the box score at one point and I'm like, this guy's like 23 of 27. That's crazy. That's not the Sam Darnold I know.

8:43And you're looking at him on third down. I mean, and he's just drilling these throws to Jackson Smith and Jigba, to Torrey Horton. You pointed out that touchdown that was on a fourth and two when he was under pressure. and not on a clean platform to make that throw. You think about the throws to Cooper Cup today as well. I mean, really, outside of that tipped-off-the-helmet interception, and I thought a really poor decision by Clint Kubiak and Mike McDonald to take him off the field and put Jalen Milrow on to try to get tricky with that option play that ends up turning into a fumble and turnover.

9:12Like, Sam Ronald did exactly what you would ever ask him to do in a perfect offensive environment, and he delivered on that.

9:18Diante Lee:To your point, the NC Hawks fans get the whole, like, I told you so. All right, where are all the people like Shiel Kapadi who said we're making a mistake going to Geno Smith and Clint Kubiak? You should laugh at me right now. I mean, I couldn't have been more wrong about that. He looks incredible. And I would love to tell you like, all right, settle down. It's five games. But my eyes are telling me this is a legit improved quarterback who's playing in the scheme he likes. And it's not a great supporting cast. I mean, Clint Kubiak, this offensive line, Jackson Smith and Jigba is great. It's not like everybody, you know, It's not like the system is working for Sam Darnold.

9:53Diante Lee:He is making things better in that system and really doing an incredible job. And then Baker Mayfield, man, he just, you know, no Mike Evans in this game. Again, because you'll hear there's so much quarterback analysis. All it is is who do you want to make excuses for and who do you not want to make excuses for? He's got the new OC. He's got no Mike Evans. He's got a banged up Chris Godwin. He's got offensive linemen who are down 29 for 33, 379 yards. two touchdowns, no interceptions. Again, I know the Seahawks had injuries on defense, but so did the Bucs and Mayfield delivered once. And those two are like so fun to watch.

10:30Diante Lee:I mean, I have not been like in the corner of either of these guys before being like, man, he doesn't get enough respect. What was, you know, that was one of the most fun game, maybe the most fun game of the day to watch was those two quarterbacks. By far, and I would say like Baker Mayfield's doing it in a way that he hasn't basically since he's been in Tampa Bay, right? Like you think about the Dave Canales year, You think about the year last year with Liam Cohen. A lot of that was explosive run game or downhill run game to set up play action pass because they don't have the offensive line that they typically want to run behind.

11:00You're not seeing them do a lot of play action. And you're also putting more on Baker's plate in terms of managing messy pockets, right? Like having to create outside of structure. Him as a scrambler has just been blowing my mind, right? Every week he is caught dead to rights on some second and third along. You're like, OK, surely this is going to be the sack or this is where he's going to to have to throw the ball away this is where he makes a mistake because he's under this pressure and a guy squirts out and it's not just a scramble for three or four yards he goes and finds eight nine yards to move the chains and you're just like you can't keep getting away with this and he continues to do so you don't think of him as being as creative a passer as what we've seen this year i think that he has been helped immensely by a mecca buka and for me personally i can't imagine a prospect that i've been like further off on maybe isaiah simmons coming out a clemson but for me when i looked at a mecca i was like this is not i see a very productive guy i see a very dependable guy i don't see a guy that you can use as the engine of your passing game at the nfl level and shame on me because i mean this dude has made acrobatic catches inside and outside the numbers deep down the field and creating after the catch he's checked every box and baker mayfield i think has been excellent at and we give matthew stafford a lot of credit for this when he knows he has a guy and that guy can't be guarded he is funneling targets to that player.

12:17Spam it, yeah. 100%. Make defenses bend, you know, and call for mercy. And we've seen that this year, and that has done so much to lift this offense, who, like you said, has just been absolutely bombarded with injuries.

12:30Diante Lee:Yeah, you don't get extra credit for varying the passing game. If they can't guard the guy, throw it to the guy. Alright, let's do it. So you dropped the spicy May. Hey, maybe MVP. Alright, so I'm doing this spontaneously here. Rank in order for me in likelihood. Drake May is a top three MVP vote getter at the end of the season. Sam Darnold is quarterbacking the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. Baker Mayfield is quarterbacking the Bucs in the Super Bowl. Those three most likely to least likely. Feel free to play along at home again. May top three MVP candidate. Baker Mayfield is the quarterback in Santa Clara representing the NFC for the Bucs.

13:14Diante Lee:Sam Darnold is the quarterback in Santa Clara representing the Seahawks in the NFC. I think if you would have said that may had to be MVP runner up or winner, I might have backed off of it. Top three is just enough wiggle room where if there's like a unanimous guy or there's a guy who gets like 98 percent of the first place votes, then maybe, you know, you might throw a second place to this guy and he just kind of gets lifted. His aggregate score gets lifted in that way. so I'll go with Drake maybe in a top three MVP guy for as much as I've liked Sam Darnold for as much as I've liked Baker Mayfield over the last two years I'm not ready to to make that leap quite yet with those guys and you know from you know from last year like I was probably the one guy on the podcast I was like hey man I think I see it with Darnold I think I see it with Mayfield you know and I've been that way throughout this regular season but still like it's a long road to hope from here I don't necessarily know if the Bucs or Seahawks are likely enough to win the NFC for me to pick them to make the Super Bowl.

14:11But Drake May, by the numbers right now, certainly looks like a top three MVP level guy.

14:15Diante Lee:If you had to pick, so what would be two? So Mays won. What's second in your order? If you had to pick Bucs or Seahawks? Second in my order would probably be Seahawks in the Super Bowl, and then third would be the Bucs. All right, I'm going to go Bucs most likely. All right, they keep winning games. They're in a weak division. I'm going to go Seahawks number two, because you've made the case. Once their defense gets healthy, they might win a lot of games. And if Darnold's playing like this, what's stopping them? And then I'll go May number three, just because I don't know that the Patriots are going to get to the record amount of wins, the win total.

14:47Diante Lee:So we'll see if they get there or not. All right, there you go. What'd you say at home? Agree with us, disagree with us. All right, let's take a break. We come back, we get to our next two questions. This episode is brought to you by American Eagle. Listen up. And you heard this from me first. American Eagle just launched the second drop of their exclusive limited edition collab with True Colors by Travis Kelsey. And I'm pretty excited to see what new styles are out now. From incredibly comfy graphic tees to cool jackets to vintage inspired rugby sweatshirts, you're gonna find something you love guaranteed.

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16:42Diante Lee:All right, question number two. Which previously unbeaten team should be more concerned with its first loss, the Eagles or the Bills? So the Eagles blow a 17-3 lead to the Broncos. The Bills, we mentioned, lose Sunday night against the Patriots. Which team should be more concerned with its first loss? Oh man, every week I get blocked by more and more Eagles fans. And I feel like this is going to be another one where I'm going to find out that I have less and less access to some of my favorite Eagles fans accounts, but it's got to be Philadelphia, man. Like we're getting to a can't hide from it.

17:17We can't talk around it. We can't, you know, we can't lie about this anymore, but I want it. And I want to kind of make this case statistically, right? Because so much of this, I think gets hung up just as in the off season with how you feel about Jalen hurts specifically. And then you throw in all this A.J. Brown stuff and it turns into a big mess that I don't even really want to interface with for the sake of this show. But I want what I want to lay out is that Philadelphia is telling us who they are as an offense. And we continue to show up week after week trying to troubleshoot something that it does not seem like they want to fix.

17:49So if you look at the data, they don't want to throw in early downs. They have the second fewest first down pass rate in the NFL, but only ahead of Buffalo. They don't really believe in play action. Fifth lowest rate on early downs in the NFL. They don't ask their quarterback to get the ball out of his hands quickly. They have the third fewest throws within two and a half seconds in the NFL, only ahead of Buffalo, guy who can't be sacked, and Josh Allen and another deep play action team. And Justin Fields, who we do not view as a proficient pocket, you know, processing type of guy. So that's not a compliment to be holding the ball that long.

18:21And then with them not getting the ball out quickly, they don't throw it deep. They have the second fewest rate of throws past the sticks in the league, only ahead of Pittsburgh. So if I'm telling you that a team doesn't want to use play action or RPOs, don't want to push the ball downfield, don't get the ball out of its quarterback's hands, and right now they are running the ball worse than any other time in the Nick Sirianni era as head coach, what does that sound like to you but a bad offense? And if we did a blind taste test and took the logo off the side of the helmet and I just laid out these statistics to you, nobody in their right mind would say that that offense is about to compete for another Super Bowl I can't like we just can't talk around that anymore maybe something changes right like by week they might have a come to Jesus moment everybody has it out in the locker room and you're able to kind of grow from there maybe Kevin Petulo figure something out midway through the season and they do land on an identity right now everything they're doing is not working and not contributing to winning and that's the reason why they lost this game on Sunday well what was most

19:23Diante Lee:interesting about this game is that like, I think they had, they had the same day that you had and they're like, all right, we're, you know, we're, we're going to do things differently today. We're going to come out passing and we're going to throw it downfield. And that ends up in a game where Saquon Barkley has six carries and they're throwing the football, what, you know, a very high pass rate on early downs and they come out in the first half and it's looking good. And then they come out in the second half and it looks terrible. They have five drives. They punt on four of them. Then the last possession to end the game against the Broncos.

19:54Diante Lee:They have three first downs on five possessions. So it is this idea. There's that identity that you laid out. And then there's kind of like, all right, well, we are only five. It's almost an identity crisis, I feel like. They see those things and are like, all right, last year we ran the ball a lot and we have really good running the ball. Let's come into the season. Let's start doing that. Then that's not working out great. Then they're like, all right, AJ Brown's unhappy. Maybe he's on to something. We've had a couple of halves here where we throw the ball and it looks good. And then they come out and they throw the football and then a team adjusts at halftime.

20:24Diante Lee:And it's like, no, we're not going to play band coverage against you guys anymore. That didn't work in the first half. They play more zone, more simulated pressures. All right, let's not blitz Jalen Hurst. Let's just rush for, but let's throw D you know, defensive backs his way and they can adjust to that. So it's just like, they've had trouble finding answers throughout the course of a game. The last two weeks, the offense has looked good in the first half and it's looked terrible in the second half. And I know you said, you know, you gave a very analytical thing, but you can't help but watch this team and be like, the vibes are terrible on offense.

20:56Diante Lee:Guys are not happy. It's just as bad as 2023. I'm sorry, guys. We can't talk around that anymore. Yeah, that's not drama. Yeah, that's not being dramatic or instigating. I mean, they're telling you, you know, they had a double move to A.J. Brown in this game from the slot. And whether he, you know, slowed up, he said he looked back and he didn't see the ball. So he thought the play was over, whatever. But it's like Jalen Hurts threw the football and it's overthrown. And then they show the replay and it's like AJ Brown was not, did not think the ball was coming his way or gave up on the player.

21:24Diante Lee:So it's all these little things that just manifest themselves throughout the course of a game. And it's only one loss. They don't lose, you know, they had won what, 20 of their previous 21. But I'm with you. I think they're just, you could tell me anything, like you said, maybe they figure things out and we're laughing about this in December saying, man, remember in October when we were worried about this offense, they still have so much talent, but it certainly could go the other way. And just statistically, this is the worst the offense has been in any season with Jalen hurts. And when you look at the talent on the roster and you look at some of the other teams we have talked about so far today, Patriots, uh, box Seahawks, would any, you know, do any of those teams have more talent than the Eagles on offense?

22:06Diante Lee:The answer would be no. I think overwhelmingly overwhelmingly. Yeah. And we can sign off on this point to me. maybe as a fan, right? If you're a fan of this team, to me, there should be nothing more frustrating than them having performances like this and then regularly coming to the podiums during the week and saying things like, we're just waiting for it to come to us. Wait, you're not the only team in the league that has a lot of offensive talent. Detroit has tons of offensive talent. I don't hear John Morton and Dan Campbell talking about, we're going to wait for the game to come to Jared Goff, they let you know from the jump, we are going to push your face mask in up front with the run game.