What Mattered in Week 17? Steelers/Ravens, Brock Purdy, Eagles/Bills, And More!

0:005 a.m.

0:01Sheil Kapadia:I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink. Running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change, and head to work. Meetings, workshops. One more Celsius, no slowing down. Working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius. Live. Fit. Go. Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com.

0:51Sheil Kapadia:Ugh. still apply. See website for details.

1:00Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Shiel Kapadia. Week 17 is in the books. The NFL season is almost over. The regular season's almost over. So what actually mattered this week? That's what we're talking about today. We're talking about that Bears 49ers shootout on Sunday night. We're talking about Eagles, Bill's and Buffalo's decision to go for two at the end. And of course, we're talking about chaos in the AFC North. The Ravens are somehow still alive. Comes down to week 18 between the Ravens and Steelers. And then maybe a little record talk. Miles Garrett, Trey McBride, some records being chased here at the end of the season.

1:40My guest today is the Ringers, Billy Gill. We will get into all of those topics and more. Let's take a break. We'll come back with Billy. This episode of the Ringer NFL show is presented by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like expecting the leadership of a team captain on the football field, but getting a sea captain? Sure, they're both captains, but who is going to run your offense? You wouldn't settle for just anything for your team, so don't settle for just any insurance. When it comes to getting the help you need, State Farm is the real deal. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

2:32All right, we are back here on the Ringer NFL show with Billy Gill. Billy, we got so much to talk about. Let's start with, you know, the NFL told us what the most important thing is, I think, because next Sunday night, Steelers-Ravens for the division. So let's start there. What matters here? You know, the Ravens, they win on Saturday night. Surprise win with Tyler Huntley and Derrick Henry. They're going up and down the field. They need the Steelers to lose on Sunday. The Steelers do lose on Sunday to the Browns. And so now we have a winner-takes-all match Sunday night. Does this game have juice?

3:08What matters for the AFC North race here?

3:11Sheil Kapadia:Everything matters. What matters? Are you getting insane? What matters? Everything matters. We were talking the last time that I was on a couple days ago about these two teams having a fantasy trade where they traded coaches because both fan bases seem to be sick of their coaches. Now you have a situation where it is Harbaugh versus Tomlin. They're playing for the division. Winner moves on. Loser goes home. Loser may never coach their team again. Everything matters. What do you? I don't understand how you're not excited about this game. I am excited, but here's the thing. We're going to try to make this a whole big thing all week.

3:49A winner takes all. This has never happened. These two coaches have faced each other this many times. And it's so exciting. And I agree. I'm going to be locked in next Sunday night. I'm going to be excited to watch it. At the same time, we've watched these teams. And I don't think either team is very good. So I actually have an idea for you, Billy, based on you. You had the idea. What was it called? White Elephant? Is that what it's called? I think so. Swap, swap? Okay, yeah. You had the idea, swap coaches, Harbaugh and Tomlin, both fan bases are sick of their coaches. So I have an idea off of that idea, okay?

4:23Okay. What if the losing coach of this game has to resign? What if we get that out there before the, it's like, it's the stepsister to your idea. Last week, the losing coach has to resign. Now we got real juice. Now we have both fan bases are deciding, well, do I want my team to make the playoffs? or am I kind of sick of my coach and I want to move on? The coaches are making decisions in game. Are they like, oh man, you know, I bet I could get so-and-so from the Giants. If I had to resign, I might get a little raise, move out there to North Jersey. What do you think of the idea? Would anyone be up for this?

5:00Sheil Kapadia:So a loser leaves town match is what you're saying here in this situation. Yeah, I mean, I could see it. And then you start wondering, are the coaches throwing this game? Like what exactly is going on here? you kind of are not wrong when you say these teams are not very good right to your point this uh this Ravens and Steelers games I'm a little bit worried about this one I think it's going to be a stinker if Lamar's not back out there I mean we saw this Saturday what Derrick Henry did and what Derrick Henry did was he he set a career high in carries he had 216 yards he had 400 or four touchdowns and they used him not like they used him the week before where he didn't play at all in the fourth quarter for whatever reason, right?

5:41Sheil Kapadia:And this week it was more out of necessity because he had Snoop Huntley playing, which, you know, he's a nice serviceable backup, but it was kind of like, if our season's on the line, we need to give it to our guy and we need to have him run all over the field all day long. And that's exactly what he did. Now, if Lamar's not out there, he may have to do that again to get him to the playoffs. He looked incredible. They went up and down the field. It was like their best offensive performance of the entire season. And their solution was give the ball to Derrick Henry a lot. And that was a great solution for that game against the Packers.

6:13But yeah, in this game, we don't know if there's going to be Lamar Jackson. We don't think there's going to be TJ Watt. They couldn't do anything about the Browns. And in that game, I mean, Bill, are you following this Miles Garrett controversy from that game?

6:26Sheil Kapadia:So that seemed to be the story of that game, which was a terrible game. I mean, the weather wasn't great, but also you had the people kind of rumbling about it on the internet afterwards. And then Miles Garrett really kind of added some fuel to the fire. When Miles Garrett said, you know what? It felt like they were doing more to stop me from setting the sack record than they were doing to try to win the game. And now they may end up missing out on the playoffs. So good for them, but it might end up costing them the long run. What a crazy story. How do you feel? Can I ask you something? How do you feel about the single season record?

6:57Sheil Kapadia:Because this is one of those things where, you know, now that the season's longer and it's more games, if you're Miles Garrett, you kind of want to do it in 16 games, right? Because that's the number of games that Strahan did it in. And then he goes and he'll tie straight or he's shortly behind Strahan and TJ Watt, who I don't know if you saw this clip. Did you see the clip that came up like in the offseason of Mark Gassino? So Mark Gassino is the guy that Michael Strahan beat for the single season sack record. And it was like, I guess a documentary crew that was following Brett Favre around for whatever reason.

7:32Sheil Kapadia:And then Mark Gassino went and he like went up and he snuck up on Brett Favre like at a card show or something. And he just started like going after him. And it was berating him. Yeah. Yeah. And Brett Favre thought at the time, like, is this like a put on like what's going on here? It's like, oh, no, Mark Gassino, like, I guess is kind of like really bitter about this thing. Still, like 15 years later, whenever that video was shot, it meant more to Mark Gassino. I don't know where Strahan is. You know what I don't like about this? and this is something that baseball got right not to go on a little tangent here since we're not even really talking about this but do you remember like the home run chase with like Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa, all that where you would see like Roger Maris' family be taken to all of these games and then they brought back the Maris' like a year ago and Aaron Judge was going to set the AL home run record which is not a thing anyone keeps track of but they would bring along the Maris' to be there to like congratulate where's Strahan?

8:29Sheil Kapadia:Like why is Strahan or TJ? Why are they? Why are they not here going to congratulate Miles Garrett on this award? I don't like this. I don't like what they're doing here. I feel like they're not taking this seriously enough. I mean, you're the only person who's asked where Strahan in the last. But like Strahan's on TV like 400 hours a week. What do you think about where Strahan? Get up and get out there. You know what I mean? Go out there and congratulate Miles Garrett. We want to see that. Did you see also, so maybe giving a little bit of credibility to his comment that they were trying to do more to not have him do it than to win the game.

9:05Sheil Kapadia:So earlier this week, he said, it'd be really cool if I got the record against Aaron Rodgers. So he kind of put it out there, which then maybe changes the game plan a little bit, which is dumb because you're fighting to get in the playoffs. But now Miles Garrett's going to have to settle for doing it next week, which, you know, it's against Joe Burrow. So it's not bad to settle against Joe Burrow either, really. But Aaron Rodgers on the way out is kind of like, I don't want him to set this record against me, which I don't even understand because I think that they take it as like a pride thing where they're like, oh, I don't want to be the person that the record's set against.

9:35Sheil Kapadia:It's like, no one remembers. We remember Brett Favre because Brett Favre took a dive, which is why Mark Gassner was so angry at him and was going after him at that card show in a sad, poorly lit, like whatever convention center. Cringe, as the kids say. I think that was cringe, right? There you go. So do you remember who the quarterback was when TJ Watt tied the record? Because I don't. Who remembers these things? What difference does that make? It makes no difference. It's just a hilarious claim. I didn't know anything about this until you texted me as we were talking about, hey, what should we talk about?

10:06And then I went and I looked at it. Miles Garrett said, I mean, to an extent, I feel like they were more worried about keeping me away from Aaron Rodgers than getting the win. And I think that's what came back to bite him. I mean, that's an amazing quote by Miles Garrett. Then Mike Tomlin's being asked about, he said, we didn't do anything against Miles that we don't normally do against Miles. So he's all fired up. And it's just a ludicrous thing to say. And hear me out for those of you who think that maybe there is some credibility to this. What if the Steelers just feel like taking sacks is not like a good thing to do?

10:39Like it's not, if you're trying to win the game, you don't want to take a lot of sacks because you lose yards on those and you might, the drives might end and you actually don't want to do that.

10:50Sheil Kapadia:And you don't want your 44-year-old quarterback getting hit unnecessarily also. Do you have a prediction headed into who takes the North? Yeah, my gut says this is sort of built for Steelers are going to be home underdogs right now. They're three-point underdogs in this game. And I don't think either team is very good. And so I feel like it's almost built for the Steelers to pull off some upset where they get like a kickoff return or force a fumble that's in the red zone. One of those games. That's where I'm leaning. I'm not totally there yet, but that's where I'm leaning. How about you? I feel like we've had, I think we had the Derrick Henry game this week and it's going to be hard to do that again next week.

11:34Sheil Kapadia:So if Lamar is still out, I feel like we may have, the Steelers may get to the playoffs and then just have an early exit the next week, you know? Okay. Yeah. One of these teams is going to be in the playoffs, you know? And the other coach has to quit their job. And the other coach has to quit. So there you go. All right. Take a break. We come back. We got some other stuff to talk about. What mattered here when we come back? The Ringer NFL Show is brought to you by FanDuel. FanDuel is changing the way you live bet football, and it starts with NextDrive SGPs. Now you can bet what's happening on the NextDrive.

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13:15All right, we're back on the Ringer NFL show. All right, does it matter Billy that the Bills went for two, they don't get the two at the end, and they lose to the Eagles 13 to 12. Now I can give you like the background on what actually matters. The Bills now cannot win the division. The Patriots win the division. The Bills are a wild card team while the Eagles can be either the two or the three seed. What did you make of that game? That decision, the rain pouring down, Nick Sirianni making faces to the camera, both during the game, after the game, Josh Allen frustrated with himself. Where are you with what happened in that football game?

13:54Sheil Kapadia:So it was, uh, I'm not someone who comes out and loves the low scoring games and says this, wow, what a game. I love a defensive battle here. Yeah. Like it, thank you. Exactly right. The hipsters. Like I don't look at what the Eagles did in the second half getting 17 yards and say, wow, what a defensive performance. I love this one. Let's put this on the highlight. You're like, no, I didn't like that. I wanted Eagles and Bills to be what we ended up kind of seeing on Sunday night football. Like I love a good shootout, you know? So it wasn't that until about six minutes left in the fourth quarter because the Eagles seem to have that game in hand, right?

14:31Sheil Kapadia:You're winning 13 to nothing. It looked like it was fine. And then all of a sudden the Bills score a touchdown. Okay, what's going to happen here? If the Bills score two touchdowns, they're going to win 14, 13. No, no, no, not till pass, my friend, because the Eagles block an extra point. So now if you get a touchdown, all you can do is tie the game here unless they block another one, which is unlikely, but you never know, right? So why not just tie it, get the ball back or give them the ball? Everybody gets a chance with the ball anyways in overtime and try to win it in overtime. But they said, no, we're going to do the thing.

15:01Sheil Kapadia:We're going to go out there. My name is Sean McDermott. and I'm going to show you that I'm a tough guy. So he tosses up the two. Josh Allen tosses up the two. And then he seemingly had it. And he just had a bad throw. He just kind of was rolling off to the side, and he just kind of sailed it a little bit, which is kind of surprising by Josh. But he was frustrated. He wanted to slam his helmet on the ground. So in hindsight, you say, you know what? They should have played for overtime, right? But they had it. I mean, they had to play there. They could have won that game. you are right about there's something gratifying about throwing up the two you know i'm not one of these wimp coaches who's yeah we're not going to overtime we're winning this now i'm sending a message to my team you know that and i because you know how you could tell that billy's because he was already doing the two when he thought they got the earlier touchdown or then they reviewed and said no he wasn't in but i'm with you can we really second guess it when they had a play that looked good i mean they got the guy open it was a good play and Josh Allen just missed the throw.

16:03He's going crazy there. Also, Josh Allen was injured here. You know, he had a foot injury. He's getting x-rays after the game. It's raining. No way. Listen, I was walking around New York City with wet socks this weekend. We did a little family trip and I just wore my sneakers and it looks like ice, but no, it's a puddle. It's like a slushy puddle. And now all of a sudden I'm walking. That's not comfortable. So it could be Sean McDermott It's just being like, man, my socks are soaked. I'm getting out of here one way or the other.

16:34Sheil Kapadia:I like that. I like that take because we here, when we were sitting very comfortably in our home down in Miami, Florida, in the frigid like 70s that it was today or 80s, we were looking at it and we were debating, like me, my wife, my parents were over here. We're like, is it snowing? Is it raining? Is that slush? The camera's all blurry. Like it's not hail. We know it's not hail. We get hail down here sometimes. You've seen hail, yeah. What I did find interesting about this game, Billy, not to transition as quickly as I am here, but the Tom Brady glove controversy was the most interesting thing about this game.

17:08How up to date are you on this? How much background do you need on this?

17:11Sheil Kapadia:You need to catch me up on this because I was having people text me about the glove. I then was trying to do a deep dive on the glove and I'm not fully caught up on what's going on with this glove. I know he was wearing one glove and people were criticizing that. And where he says, you know what, his throwing hand, which I guess is now his microphone hand, needs to not have the glove on. Then some people were taken to a dark place, especially when he was in Buffalo. You know, we don't need to go into that situation with OJ Simpson. Well, we might need to. I mean, if we're going to cover all angles of this, we can see where the, but here's what happened.

17:45So Tom Brady, during the game, he has this theory, which I thought it was actually great. I'm not even being, you know, insincere about this. He was analyzing the game. And when the players would drop passes, he would be like, they're wearing the plastic gloves. I always felt like you should wear the leather gloves because if you wear the leather gloves, he was saying something about friction. I don't know if it's some TB12 method or what, but he seemed to have done the research on this where the leather gloves, you're going to be able to hold onto the football better than the plastic gloves. Billy, he's mentioning this.

18:16He must've mentioned it 35 times during the day. He's obsessed with this. And you know, me being just watching it, I can't get enough of it. I want to know every detail about what he's talking about. So then they go to the on-camera shot and they show Tom Brady and he has one glove on. And it's actually, from my analysis, on his mic hand. So he's got the glove. And so there's all these. Now it's like, well, why are they doing that? So I'm like, all right, maybe that was just one weird camera shot. He just took it off real quickly. No, he's on camera all throughout the game with one glove on on his left hand.

18:54It's the elephant in the room and it never gets addressed. I don't know how they don't talk about it at all. So now all these theories are floating around. Like one theory, you know, maybe it's the whole Philip Rivers thing. He's telling teams, you know, I never wore a glove on my throwing hand when I played and I'm not wearing one now because I'm ready. If you need me for the playoff run, I'm ready to go right now. So that's one theory that's out there. You kind of alluded to the other theory out there. I don't know how, but is there some type of troll job? He's in Buffalo. There's a glove involved.

19:27He said Bill's fans were flipping him the bird. The Patriots are now back on top. Again, we don't need to do any kind of deep dive there. I think you understand what I'm saying there. And last one I'll throw your way. Is there some type of TB12 business venture here? Where now all of a sudden during the week, oh, get your TB12 leather gloves. They keep your hands warm, whether you're calling a game in Buffalo or playing in a game, whatever. is this going to be some type of financial benefit to Tom Brady? It was one of the most, it was the most bizarre thing I saw all day.

19:59Sheil Kapadia:Yeah. I mean, he seems to be somewhat obsessive compulsive, right? Everything that we know about him, he's very particular. So the idea that he wears just one glove is not all that surprising when you remember back to his playing days and his deflake lid and all that stuff. Like everything with him is like very, has to be exactly as it is that he's comfortable. There's a reason for it. Yeah. Yeah. Leather gloves in a wet situation. I mean, those are one time use gloves. Once you get your leather gloves wet, like you're tossing that out. And I guess let's be real. Professional sports are very wasteful.

20:30Sheil Kapadia:You know, like I'm sure that Tom is going through five pairs of those leather gloves easily in that game. Right. Well, guess what, Tom? Guess what? We don't all make$30 million a year for calling football games. We don't all have disposable leather gloves. And by the way, and I don't mean to invoke their name and bring people into this that we don't want involved in this. But if Peter was watching that game and he's out there and he's saying we need everyone to be wearing leather gloves as opposed to pleather or plastic gloves. You're stepping into something you don't want to step into, Tom Brady.

21:03Sheil Kapadia:I'm telling you that right now. Like you do not, the scary, I will tell you right now, the scariest email I've ever gotten in my entire life was an email that I got when I was at ESPN. And it was something that I said, I don't remember exactly what I said or what it was, but the sender was at PETA.org. And then it was a subject was, we heard you talking about this. We wanted to send you more information to educate you further on this thing. And I was like, I am never talking about whatever that was ever again. I don't remember what it was. I did like the men in black thing where I just like erase my memory.