We're Cooked: A One-Month NFL Misery Index

0:00Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Sheil Kapadia. Fun show today. Very simple exercise. Are these teams cooked? It's basically a one month misery index and we have the perfect guest for this exercise. Passionate Jets fan. I have been listening to this man podcast. I was thinking about this, honestly, before we said it's more than 10 years. It's more than, you know, my youngest daughter because I was listening in Seattle when I would be taking those road trips. And now, finally, for the first time, I get to podcast with Dan Hanses. You know him from the Heed the Call podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts.

0:39Thank you for joining me today, my friend. I know I've reached that. Thank you, Sheel, for having me. I've reached that stage where when people say that, it's like, how old am I? Am I 77 years old? But I guess it's, you know, I've been around for a while now, so I'm going to embrace it. I'm going to embrace being the old lion. Listen, the hair still looks great. If people, you know, YouTube, Ringer NFL, if ever there was a reason to watch, I mean, Dan Sayre would be reason number one. You're not getting that from me every day. I'll tell you that much. All right, let's take a break. We come back and we are going to do the misery index.

1:12We've got four teams we've got to talk about. 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. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details.

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3:21All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. We have to start with the Jets. And Dan, I need to tell you, I'm not one of these LOL Jets. I actually, I'm like the Giants should take more heat. They haven't been that much better than the Jets the last 10 years. I want good things for the Jets. Good things have not happened for the Jets. They are 0-4. They had a mistake-filled Monday night showing against the Dolphins. Penalties, turnovers. Garrett Wilson's frustrated. Sauce Gardner says refs are picking on him. I was listening to heed the call earlier today, and you had some very raw emotion right after that game.

3:57So how are we feeling a day later about the New York Jets, and are they cooked, Dan, at this point? You could perhaps tell by the open of our latest Heed the Call that I grew up on WFAN radio. Yeah, Shield, they're cooked. They're cooked. And now I just want to, I think what I'm curious about is how well done, how crispy, how blackened is this going to be? It's silly to say this about a 17-game season, but I really did think, and I said this a lot over the summer, that week one against Aaron Rodgers at home just felt like such an important game for not just the Jets to get off on the right foot, but for Aaron Glenn and after all the drama with Glenn and Rodgers.

4:41And what happens? It's a back and forth game. There's a lot of good that came out of it in terms of the offense, especially. But the defense struggles. Rodgers gets the last laugh. He says some things in the press conference that goes under the lol Jets category. And you're like, and I remember thinking to myself, damn it, this is exactly what they didn't need. And then what happens? The bills blow them out the next week. They have a comeback that falls short against the Bucks the week after that. And then this, the primetime misery game that's become such a part and parcel of the Jets in the last 15 years that it's just, they're going in the wrong direction.

5:16And the thing that's really troubling is Aaron Glenn, almost in lightning speed, is like going into this darkened place where he was defiant, you know, his press conference. Can I use language on this show? Sure. Yeah, it's like, we're the New York Jets and we're built for this shit. And it was like, yeah, yeah, let's go. And by the end of the fourth game, when he's the third New York Jets coach since, wait for it, Lou Holtz and Adam Gase to start his career 0-4, Or he's hitting us with a, we're going to go back to work and we're going to do what we can do. And it's like, oh no, is this already where we're at?

5:54So I'm afraid now that we could be staring down the barrel of three and 14. And in true jet form, someone will go two and 15. We won't even get the top pick. But yes, this is troublesome. Yes, they are well done. They are crispy. They're in the air fryer and you can't get it open. It's locked, the mechanism, and it's just cooking and cooking and cooking. I feel like the vibes that you described are a little, are more concerning to me than the actual on-field performance. You know, when there are reports come Monday night, Aaron Glenn's giving it to the team in the locker room. And then they asked Sauce Gardner and he's like, yeah, I'm not, I can't really remember what he said.

6:31It's like, what do you mean? The locker room just, you know, there, there's a way to handle that Garrett Wilson is catching passes and he's frustrated on the sideline. So all those things make me nervous, but Dan, And I'm going to do something that I believe no one in the content space is going to do this week. And I'm going to make a case for hope for the New York Jets. Now, listen, by the end of this, you might want to stuff me in a locker. You might sign off and say, I don't know why I even agreed to do this podcast with you this week. But stick with me for a second. I'm going to get a little nerdy.

7:01So there's this metric I like to look at early in the season called success rate. And all it looks at is, was it a positive play or a negative play? So if it's third and seven, you get an eight yard completion. That's a positive play. If you get a 50 yard completion, that's a positive play, but they're treated the same. A good thing happened for the offense here. So I like to look at that early in the season because you have, you know, 75 yard touchdowns, you have turnovers and it's like, are those things going to sustain week to week over the course of an entire season? So I was looking at that earlier today, Dan, and the Jets right now are eighth in offensive success rate and they're seventh in defensive success rate.

7:42And the only other teams that are top 10 in both those categories are the Rams, the Packers, and the Lions. Three teams that we would look at and say that team could get to the Super Bowl. So I know what you're saying. If you're Jesse, you're yelling at me right now. She said, who cares about your nerdy stats? We don't. But the point here is that the Jets are 0-4. They are getting killed on explosive plays, which maybe that'll continue the rest of the way. They're getting killed on turnovers. They're minus seven on turnovers. And even if you look at the nerdier stats, it's even kind of worse than that.

8:14And maybe those things continue the rest of the way, but maybe they're not quite as bad. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say, there's going to be a portion of this season. At some point, it might be a month. It might be six weeks. It might be three weeks where we say the jets are actually a little bit more of that frisky team that I think we thought coming into this season than the team we've seen through the first four weeks. All right. Did I convince you? Do you want to punch me in the face? Where are we here? No, definitely no violence shield. I think I could buy on the offensive side of things because outside of the Bills game where they just kind of got flattened, as is going to happen when there's that much of a talent deficit, the offense is flashing even against the Dolphins.

8:56You know, they open the game with the long drive where they're just running it down Anthony Weaver's defense's throat. and then what happens? Fumble at the goal line. They were moving that ball regularly. They just couldn't get out of their own way. I think Brees Hall put it well. Teams will shoot themselves in the foot and we come back and shoot ourselves in the head. Yikes. The one thing, so the offense, okay. And Fields, I think, on balance has been good in the games that he's played. The running game, the offensive line, there's problems. The defense, I don't know how you could pop the hood on the Jets with the analytics and come up with the defensive success rate.

9:31I need to kind of study how that could happen because I feel like that's been the Steve Wilkes defense is not taken and they have such a dearth of playmakers on this defense, which I think partly accounts for the zero turnovers they have this year. Yeah, I think the big thing and this might not be a great thing is that they weren't great against the run in this game. But I think overall, if you look at kind of the metrics against the run, they've been pretty good. But I'm with you. You have to be concerned about the past defense and the explosive plays for sure. All right. So I didn't get a yes out of Dan, but there you go.

10:01Jets fans. I'm trying to give you something here. We're not even in October. So let's see what happens there. All right. I don't want to be hurt anymore. I understand if I were you, I'd be like, shut up. Who cares? Oh yeah. Turnovers are going to flip. Turnovers are going to flip for the Jets and explore. Yeah, sure. No. So I, I'm just, I'm trying to give you something. Cincinnati Bengals. I honestly don't know how much time we need to spend on them because we might both reach the same conclusion. Joe Burrow goes down. Dummies like me say, Hey, you know, they weren't awful a couple of years ago with Jake Browning.

10:32Well, right now they look horrible. They look like maybe the worst team in the NFL outscored 76 to 13 in their last two games. Now they are two and two on the season. I think they look hopeless. I think this team is one of the worst teams in the NFL and turn the page to 2026. Am I overreacting or are the Bengals cooked? No, I think we're in lockstep on this one. I mean, you take a look at the schedule, their home lines at green Bay, home Steelers, home jets, home bears at Steelers. I mean, it's going to be tough for them and Browning. Yeah. He was a bit of a figure of intrigue. Um, because while he was a, I kind of viewed him as like a 2001 era Brett Favre, uh, where he was still the gunslinger, but now is kind of a reckless gunslinger, but then give him like a case of Miller light.

11:27And that's Jake Browning compared comparatively, but that's what we were getting last time he played extensive snacks. So he's still like, all right, I still have these two great receivers and they were, they were lighting it up. I think that, I think they'll probably probably get back to that. And I think they'll score points, but I do think there is a bit of a, like a hangover with this team because I think there was a lot, a lot of the idea that Burrow and I picked Burrow to have a major comeback season this year. I had the Bengals making a playoff run and, and that two things were wrong about that.

12:01One again, it was overlooking how flawed this team is and other areas and to how vulnerable they were. If the worst case scenario happened, which did. So yeah, I mean, even if the offense gets better, the defense isn't good enough to pick up the slack. And I think we're in a situation where if this team wins eight games, it's, it's a success. And I don't know, I don't know how you, how you rush Joe Burrow back to play with this kind of potentially chronic injuries. Troy, Troy said on the Monday night game, he's like, yeah, Dion had something similar and he never recovered from it. So they just got to be careful about how they play this as well.

12:37It's, it's a tricky one. Tough, tough situation in Cincinnati. Yeah. I think more likely at this point to be like picking in the top five, honestly, than being in that eight, eight win range. When I look at this team, I mean, And I think you're seeing that this team was built in a very specific way with Joe Burrow controlling the offense and doing things his way. And that was a pretty good formula. I'm with you. I thought he was going to have a good season. I had them in the playoffs and he was making up for stuff. The shortcomings on the offensive line, maybe some of the issues schematically, the coaching, you know, the defense we knew was not going to be great this year, but it's just as bad as it was last year.

13:12Jamar Chase is frustrated. The run game stinks. The O-line is bad. I mean, I'm not trying to pile on Bengals fans. I usually am a Bengals defender, but this to me looks like a lost season. Trey Hendrickson, I was wondering, Dan, you know, is he going to be on this team throughout the year? Is that a name we hear in October that, hey, a contender needs a pass rusher? Maybe he could get traded because I do think sooner rather than later, they're going to be looking ahead and coming to that realization. And we don't need to like cycle back to summer conversation points, but I was one of the people that was like, I don't think you should be paying Jamar Chase and Tee Higgins just to keep the quarterback happy.

13:49I understand the quarterback is such a towering figure in the organization, so I understood why it happened. But again, it kind of laid bare when you invest that much in those two guys. It was going to, again, leave you vulnerable in the back end if chaos struck. And I'm with you. I tend to defend the Bengals more than other people in our sphere. Like, um, Zach Taylor is a general, is a figure of suspicion in the football cognoscente, as I call it. Um, but like, what do you want Zach Taylor to do? I mean, he didn't, he didn't build this roster. He might've had a hand in decision-making, but, uh, and he's not going to, I see Jamar Chase go up to him on the sideline to complain at one point.

14:28It's like, well, what do you want him to do? What are we going to do that? I feel like it's, it's, it's dreadful. And it's, it's when a quarterback, especially a special quarterback gets hurt like that, it just lays bare how cruel football can be that everything could be so tied up in this one person on the roster and everything goes to hell without him. Yeah, no doubt. It's so fragile. You look forward to the season all year long. And then all of a sudden your season is gone. By the way, football cognoscente, I think was inspiration. You know, I've been using football hipsters for a few years now.

14:59And now that you mentioned that I do think you deserve, I, cause I take offense now when people say, I'm like, Hey, I was saying football hipsters before you were, but I need to give you credit because I like when you're rail on like, Oh, every, you know, the Lamar me and all that. I'm like, all right. Yeah. I'm with him. You know, maybe we're the old guys, but I'm with him. Everybody settled down. Yeah. Matt Money Smith, the voice of the chargers always gave me a crap because he said, you're not pronouncing it correctly. It's Kanye sent there. I was like, all right, Mr. Intelligence. I'll say it how I want to say it.

15:28I like yours better. Yeah, no, I'm with you. All right. Let's take a break. We come back into the big news of the day with the Baltimore Ravens, and then we will finish with the San Francisco 49ers.

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17:15The good news is PD is treatable. If you notice a curve with a bump, a trusted urology specialist can help diagnose it and walk you through your options, including non-surgical treatment. To learn more about Peyronie's disease, Visit talkaboutpd.com. All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. So this segment, this show was kind of built for this year's Baltimore Ravens. You know, this could be a year from hell for Baltimore. We get news on today that Lamar Jackson expected to be out two to three weeks, could be out two to three weeks. That's per the Baltimore Sun with a hamstring injury. Ravens are one in three.

17:55They got the Texans coming up this weekend with Cooper Rush, with Tyler Huntley backing him up. They got Nnamdi Matabuke, one of their best defensive players, is out for the season. Dan, is there hope in Baltimore? Are they cooked? Is this the 2025 year from hell team? I mean, let's start here. Are we cooked as football fans? Because so many of these high-profile teams are losing their quarterbacks, and we're getting locked into these island games with the certain figures that we don't want to see as signal callers. I'm going to hold on saying they're done because I think the AFC North is not as fearsome as perhaps we thought it could be.

18:36Obviously, we just talked about Cincinnati, Pittsburgh. I'm not really in on them. The Browns are the Browns. So I think there's time to course correct. I guess your boss, Simmons, in the old days, I remember he would write the columns And then one of his things, he's like, oh, the no effing way game, which would be when you're playing video games, Madden, and oh, I'm not going to win. The computer is not going to let me win this game. It kind of feels like maybe it's the no effing way season now for the Ravens. And no matter what happens, maybe this just isn't the year for Baltimore. But the fact that Lamar is going to come back, I could see them putting together a run.

19:12But listen, the defense losing this many guys, it does make you think, is this just one of those years? So I could still see him getting hot, getting to 10 wins. I think that could win this division. And then you have a home game and then who knows what happens. But it seems pretty bleak right now. Very bleak. I'm with you. I think this could be the year from healthy. We could be saying, all right, everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. But I'm not there yet with this team. I think the division is the biggest thing. You know, yeah. Are the Steelers going to run away with this thing?

19:45I don't think so. The Bengals, we just said they're cooked. The Browns are the Browns. And so it's going to be open for you. The Ravens have the second easiest remaining schedule in the NFL. So there are some games there where even if you're playing with the backup quarterback, you might have a chance. So I think it could get rocky here for a couple of weeks. And, you know, but I'm not going to be able to throw dirt on them until kind of it's all right. Lamar Jackson is gone for longer or they're mathematically out of it because I think they have a chance. I do think, damn, that this is a big stretch for John Harbaugh.

20:15You know, it feels like some of these losses, Ravens fans and maybe national voices are turning on him a little bit going like, man, do they just need a new voice with Lamar Jackson? It's been so long with this regime. And I think now's Harbaugh's chance to prove like, no, I do provide an edge. I've won a lot of games. I've coached a lot of different teams. And all right, we're injured, but we're going to figure out a way to still be competitive. I mean, we see that with great coaches all the time. You know that. All right. You get some injuries. your quarterback's out for two weeks, four weeks, whatever, and you're still able to stay in it.

20:48So yeah, I'm with you. I'm holding off. Let's see what Harbaugh shows us here the next couple of weeks. Let's see what it looks like when Lamar Jackson's back on the field. Because historically, they win 70 % of their regular season games with Lamar Jackson. So it's like if he comes back, you still at least have a shot. And this is like one of the great dumb things about sports, how things don't make sense sometimes. Like, wouldn't this be ironic if this is the year that they make the big spirited playoff run when we all kick dirt on them and the roster isn't where it has been? When all these years we've been talking about, like I talk about it on my show that it's an old buster only ism, the Steinbrenner doctrine about the old Yankee dynasty and anything less than a championship is considered failure.

21:30There's so much pressure on that organization. maybe with all these injuries now this is a little tinfoil hat but maybe with all these injuries and people counting them out and the slow start some of that pressure can ease off of having to be this towering titan of the league and then waiting for january and are they going to choke again maybe they come at this from a little bit of a different angle and can get some momentum and some juice in a different way um we see that in sports all the time that yeah you know i remember with the eagles in 2017 it's like are they going to win their first super bowl ever with nick foals in the playoffs.

22:02I don't want to bring up the Red Sox, but even when the Red Sox finally broke through, it was in a weird way. And so that happens in sports all the time. Yeah, they sneak in as a wild card and all of a sudden Lamar's healthy and they're healthy and they go on a run in the AFC. That wouldn't be shocking. So that one, there's a wide range of outcomes. It's a positivity from us there, Shia. I was aware we were just going to bury the entire slate here. Let's see if it continues with the next team, positivity or not, because it's the San Francisco 49ers. Now they're three and one, you know, but Brock Purdy has this nagging toe injury.

22:36He's questionable for Thursday night's game against the Rams. Ricky Pearsall is questionable. Jawan Jennings is questionable. They already lost Nick Bosa. George Kittle has been out, but they are three and one, Dan. Where are you? Are they like the 49ers? Are you like, I thought they were going to look a little bit better than this. Are you like, be patient or are you, they're cooked. Too many injuries. Don't take them seriously. Definitely not cooked. Just like John Harbaugh, I give him the benefit of the doubt of being able to find a way to put this back together. Shanahan is, you know, a guy that you trust to try to piece things together, even if he's dealing with a lot of roster things.

23:13But Shanahan is a guy I think about a lot. Last year, obviously, with the 6-11. And, you know, you think about what he thinks about at night at this point in his career. as a guy that's seen as like one of the geniuses and one of the most important figures in pro football. But what happened in, you know, McCall Hardman in 58, Jimmy G overthrowing Sanders in 54, 28-3 in 51. Maybe he thinks about the deep cut, Shield. Maybe he's thinking Ram scoring 13 unanswered in the fourth quarter of the 21 NFC title game. Like all these times where he had, it was right there in front of him and then they just fell short.

23:50And now this last year, and then the way this year started is like, damn it. This is, I was right there all those years. And now I'm running into these walls in September instead of the end of January. And it's, it's like the, the rock is coming down the hill. It's gotta be a very frustrating place for him because it's not quite the Ravens where it's the Steinbrenner doctrine, but at the same time he's been, we've been waiting so long for them to get over the hump. And now it feels like the roster is kind of going against them a little bit with some injury and age and all that. So I don't count them out.