NFL Week 12 Recap!!

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The Heed the Call Podcast.

Wonders if the season doesn't start till Thanksgiving, then what the hell are we doing here?

Great question.

But now we started the show already, so we might as well just plow through.

Welcome to Heed the Call, the flagship program.

week 12.

Dan Hans is here with the heroes.

Mark Sessler, of course, Connor Orr,

and Justin Graver.

Mark, listen, we're here.

I know it's not Thanksgiving yet, but we're here, so we might as well crank through week 12.

Yeah, it would have been an odd career move when we launched the show just to like hardcore decide to do our first episode on like November 30th or something.

That would have been a little odd.

So I just make it like we need to do an elongated version of the summer where we're doing team previews through September and October and November.

Like I'm sure it would be confusing on some level, but some people would get it, but we'd probably lose a great chunk of the listenership.

A vast majority of people

would not follow us down that road.

Yeah.

Speaking of listeners and viewers, we made our debut on Sky Sports as heed the call this morning.

Amazing, fun, great.

Love doing it with Neil Reynolds.

And we're going to be on there again throughout the rest of the regular season and hopefully through the playoffs.

So make sure you check in on their pregame show every week.

And now, Connor,

fresh off a trip to Yankee Stadium to see if his beloved Army gets stomped by his former favorite team, the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

Now

we turn our minds to professional football in week 12.

Are you ready for this?

I'm ready for it.

And actually, Army heavily borrowed from by a couple NFL teams this weekend.

so it was fun to see the parallels.

Very neat.

He's a football man, folks.

That's right, let's go.

All right, without further ado, let's dive in.

Start it, some wild games today.

Some wild games, and we'll start with one right now that was played at Soldier Field.

Yes,

the Vikings had piloted their ship into smooth seas on Sunday.

Arg!

Now that's a pirate.

Yo-ho!

Think that's also pirates.

Whatever.

Anyway, the Vikings were celebrating life in that classic way that Vikings always do.

Holding a 10-point lead over the Bears with less than a minute to play.

But then a sudden storm rolled in.

Storm, ship, Vikings.

A long kickoff return, a quick touchdown, a two-point conversion, an on-side kick recovery, a laser first-down strike from Caleb Williams, a field goal, tie game.

When the Bears won the toss in overtime, the stage appeared set for one of the worst regular season losses in recent memory for the Vikings, which is saying something.

If you know the history of the Minnesota Vikings, no matter.

Brian Flores' defense stiffened, and Sam Darnold did the rest, throwing for 90 of his 330 yards in the overtime drive that culminated with a Parker Romo game winner final score, Vikings 30, Bears 27.

Yeah, this was a game that

if they would have let this one get away, Minnesota,

it was a type of loss that could send you into a doom spiral because it was just, it was so in their back pocket.

They had the game under control.

And

the fact that they were able to weather that absolute chaos.

I mean, giving up an oddside kick in 2024 is almost impossible to do.

And yet they did it, but they got the stop.

And like I said, Sam Darnold, who we were talking about,

and

this has been an up and down month for him, but the last two weeks, he's kind of come out of the slump.

And the general assumption was that when he did go into that slump, he would crater because Sam Darnold stinks, or so it goes.

But no, in the Darnold Hive, we knew that we were just going to give him time to figure things out.

And what he has figured out here, gang, is that if these defenses are going to key in on Justin Jefferson, he doesn't have to throw to Justin Jefferson anyway and just hope that the greatness of the great Jefferson will carry the day.

No, if the defenses are overly keyed in on that wide receiver, other guys are going to be open.

So, on a quiet day for Justin Jefferson, and what's been kind of a quiet month overall, I think, for Jefferson, Darnold found other players.

Jordan Addison, eight catches for 162 yards and a touchdown.

TJ Hawkinson is back, 114 yards.

And yes, the Vikings are 9-2, staying one game behind the lines so it got scary but the Vikings take care of business as they've been doing all year

and that's their fourth straight win they play a four at six four of their final six games at home and I I'm I'm here's where I am on Sam Darnold like this idea that he's gonna suddenly regress back to what we saw three or four years ago I just don't buy it I think that we're seeing a quarterback that's just grown and developed when you get this kind of performance today

it's it's I always had a hard time believing in Vikings teams that

did well in the regular season and then would crater in the playoffs.

They were a little bit half-baked.

I feel very differently about this team for so many reasons.

And I'd throw Aaron Jones into that mix too.

He had been quiet as well.

And when you get today's Aaron Jones, that adds a whole nother element.

So I think that for this team right now,

when Jordan Addison, Aaron Jones, these guys are all cooking, the Vikings could hang with anyone

except maybe the Lions, but I think they could do that too.

Yeah,

this is where I am on the Vikings.

I don't think maybe they're a 9-2 team, but that's their record.

I don't see them as a dominant team.

I think they are several notches below the Lions, right?

So,

but there's something to be said for the way they take care of their business.

And, you know, in that overtime, they overcame a sack and multiple penalties.

That's how Darnold got to 90 yards on that last drive.

So they kind of came back for that.

And you mentioned Aaron Jones.

He goes for 106 yards and a score here.

So they have the different pieces in place.

They have a chance here, I think,

against almost any team in the NFC, this side of the lines, or maybe they can.

Maybe they could catch the lines on a bad day.

Here is Darnold, by the way, on resetting the mindset after things went totally mad in the final minutes of the fourth quarter.

You're you're expecting to, you know, obviously recover the onside kick and just take some knees.

So, your mindset, you got to get ready to go back out there and execute at a high level.

And I feel like our offense did a really good job of that, obviously, in overtime.

And on the

Bears side of things, yeah, it's a tough one.

It's a Bears team that has lost so many close games this year, and that's got to be frustrating, obviously.

But they did fight.

The offense definitely is showing progress

under Thomas Brown.

So

that's a good thing.

And Caleb Williams made some big-time throws in this game.

A gorgeous kind of on the scramble toward the sideline teardrop pass to DeAndre Swift stands out.

As I said, he ripped a pass in in the final seconds of regulation to set up the field goal.

That just like his arm talent is really outrageous.

So it's been a topsy-turvy year, Connor, for the Bears overall.

And I still think their coaching holds them back, and they need to address that in a more profound way.

Let's put it that way.

Come January.

But I still think Arrow's pointing up overall with Williams, even if they're not getting the results.

And I was for a long time a big Matt Eberflues apologist.

And if you look historically, some of the win percentages that the Bears had in games that he lost over the last two years, 99, 97, like, I think the lowest was like 79.

Like he's lost a ton of outlier games, and you feel bad.

But what drove me nuts today in particular was you mentioned the Caleb Williams throws, which were unbelievable.

He had one to Keenan Allen at the beginning of the game, too, that was between like two Vikings defenders that were diving.

My God.

But so you get a field goal blocked in this game.

And I went back and I put that field goal right up against the one that they got blocked in Green Bay.

And I watched them at like 0.0005 speed, frame by frame by frame.

Vikings ran the exact same block.

They put the exact same people in the exact same places, and you had the exact same personnel on the field.

And whether it's your kicker's kicking low, and you just have nothing that you could do in that situation, get a new kicker, but you have to do something different.

And that, to me, is so frustrating when you get the total package from your team and then something that you could very easily address and is on film for everybody to see.

You just fail to address it.

And it's just, you're just sapping points away from your team.

Five straight losses for the Bears, who are now four and seven.

Let us move on.

It stayed weird.

We'll get back to the weird games, but let's now pivot to the game that,

at least by, you know, the teams involved, promised to be a great affair, but there's a lot cooking with the defending conference champion 49ers to Lambeau Field.

Oh, one last note before we go to Lambeau Field, because this is a crazy stat, and I apologize, but I got to share this one.

From Kevin Siefert, teams that were trailing by 10-plus points in the final 30 seconds of regulation are now

0 and 1,882 since the start of the century.

The Bears were the second team over that span to force overtime.

The 2012 Lions were the other.

Both involved recovered on-side kicks.

And in this case, the Bears did get the ball in overtime with a chance to win it.

They couldn't close it out, but they almost made the best kind of history.

Does it feel like every week we're getting one of these stats where like the last 862 teams to do this like lost to one and this week it's different?

There's been like six or seven of these.

This was almost different, but alas, the Bears fell once more.

All right, two Lambeau Field.

In days of old, Vince Lombardi had a cozy liquor bar in his Green Bay home, and he'd invite the whole gang over after pummeling opponents into the ice and snow.

The old master would approve of this one, watching Josh Jacobs operate as a dragon from another age, destroying San Francisco on the ground.

Yes, this came against the Niners' roster that right now feels like Heaven's Gate Part 2.

But Jeff Hathley's Packers defense generated a trio of turnovers, erased Christian McCaffrey, and threw Brandon Allen, who was wearing a splint on his left hand, disastrous, into a hellscape.

No Brock Purdy, no Trent Williams, no Joey Bosa, endless penalties for the Niners.

Shanahan red-faced and beside himself.

You can feel this season fading away, but not for Green Bay, an outfit built for the Russian winner.

Packers 38, Niners 10.

A total stomping, Mark.

And by the way, can you imagine old Vince Lombardi's house with all the carpeting and the

curtains and the couches, the stench and cigars and cigarettes that were in there?

Beautiful.

Probably really smelled in that house.

I don't know why I thought about that.

But yeah, it is weird watching

what's weird watching the 49ers now, right?

And I think you brought it up last week, Mark, that Kyle Shanahan looks like he's 62 years old all of a sudden.

He's aged.

He is aged.

The whole team seems like it's aged overnight, and their lack of physicality, I think, really stood out in this game on both sides of the ball, but especially on defense where they just got run over.

They seem as though they can't execute anything that they want to do.

And we get it when you don't have Trent Williams in there and you're missing key players and you're starting quarterback.

Like that makes sense.

But on defense, like when Joey Bosa went out in the latter half of last week's game, That defense completely lost its power.

Like he's the center of their pass rush by every metric.

And like their stars are just not able to do much.

And what I'm seeing also is that penalties were a huge part of this game.

At one point, they had 12 men on the field called on back-to-back plays and they cut to Shanahan and he's looked like he's ready to murder the 12th person.

Like he's absolutely furious.

And there were a ton of pre-snap penalties, which is, you know, this is not what we thought of the Niners.

And there was a huge Debo Samuel punt or kick return that was wiped out by a penalty that would have changed this game to some degree.

And then it really just slipped away.

And I saw the stat that Debo Samuel is costing them $22 million,

while the the Packers' seven wide receivers cost six

or excuse me, eight.

And so to me, that's the difference between where we are with these two teams right now because the Packers have all these versatile young parts and they're a team of the future.

And yet they go,

it's a team that's not big in free agency.

And they went and added Josh Jacobs.

And I was like, I don't know what version of this guy we're going to get, but he fits.

And he absolutely stomped and dominated them.

And it kind of gives you hope that not only are they built for winter, but they are, it's not just on Jordan Love.

Jordan Love had a pretty quiet game with a couple, one huge,

what would have been an absolute touchdown to Christian Watson that was, it was dropped.

But other than that, like his numbers were, you know, they were average, and they really, they really just basically ended this game, I thought, by halftime with their power and their might.

If you go back to, this gave me think of this, and then I went back and looked at it a little bit.

So there was a game that Green Bay played in in 2021 when Aaron Rodgers was there, and it was the season opener against the Saints when they got absolutely waxed 38-3.

I don't know if you guys remember this, but in that game, Dennis Allen.

Every time the Packers did one of those long bootleg plays with Aaron Rodgers, they would just send a screamer at him and blitz the crap out of him.

And that's like a staple play in the Shanahan offense.

All of a sudden, teams are doing that to the 49ers again.

And you saw it a couple times, Green Bay doing it to San Francisco.

And it's really interesting, minus Brock Purdy and his processing speed, trying to run that offense has become almost impossible.

And you're really seeing them struggle from a schematic standpoint, too.

I didn't think Brandon Allen was terrible.

I think, you know, some of his passes were coming out a little too hot, which led to at least one of the interceptions.

And they barely saw the field on offense in the first quarter, which kind of took McCaffrey out of it.

And then when McCaffrey did get the ball, there was not really anywhere to go.

You know, there is just, there's very little to hold on to right now with San Francisco.

We don't know even if Purdy's coming back next week, and you got to go to Buffalo.

So, we know what the NFC West is, and we're going to get into it as the show goes on.

NFC West is wide open, and there's no big-time juggernaut in the division.

So, writing off the Niners might be premature, but there is mounting, mounting evidence that this might just not be their year.

And that's a possibility now that you have to take into account as one of the outcomes of this year.

I did have one thought that, like,

with Purdy Purdy out, and you're right, Allen was not a total disaster, but

I don't know what you're thinking when your quarterback is in there with a sling on his

left finger that he broke a couple weeks ago in practice and

drops a snap in the very first possession.

And I don't know if that, I think that plays into it.

Like, I mean, he threw a couple bad picks, but I do wonder if like...

for the Brock Purdy future contract situation, like, oh, we start to realize that he does work in this offense more than just the way you plug any quarterback in, because I think you're right, Connor, it's the processing speed and just the way the whole thing seems to function with it with him in there.

Because McCaffrey was new, McCaffrey had four yards rushing in the first half and never really got off track and then had a pretty bad fumble.

Like the whole thing just looked broken and depressing.

I mean, it's not like the offense has been humming with Purdy either.

There is a question whether there's a better option than him as well, or do you want to pay Brock Purdy like one of the best players in the league?

And that's a very difficult question to answer with Kirk Cousins maybe floating out there again.

I wonder where Kyle Shanahan's mind is drifting in John Lynch as the season continues to spin out.

There's

a lot up in the air with this organization right now.

And it's so odd to see them.

And they have been killed by injuries.

But just to watch the Niners play a game where

the talent difference is so stark on the other side.

I'm glad you brought up Josh Jacobs because is there anybody running harder than him right now?

He's a bad dude.

No, he looks like the.

He had that great year a couple years ago, but like his physical

ability to dominate.

Like, I mean, he absolutely kind of broke their will on the first drive, which was eight minutes long.

And to your point about the Niners not getting the ball much, it's like they were able to just lean on him.

All right.

Let's move on.

By the way, it's feast week on Underdog.

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audience only.

What exactly is

he or she?

I'm assuming he eating there because it sounded like a...

Could be anybody.

Could be a he, could be a she, you know,

well, but it's like, it would sound like a knife going into like a dry piece of French bread versus like something moist or a turkey or, you know.

Well, you know, Thanksgiving isn't

a Norman Rockwell painting for everyone, Mark.

So maybe it's time to get out of your candidate bubble and realize that, you know,

your Greenwich bubble, you know.

No, I like, I mean, living next to Jim Nance and Chris Russo, you know.

I am living in an apartment on the West Coast.

All right, let's get to another weird game.

Gravedigger, your Tennessee Titans going to Houston and getting weird in the south.

Here we have a Texans team struggling a bit to find its footing in the back half of the season.

What's the recipe to get right and find their stride?

A divisional matchup with a 2-8 turnover-prone Titans team that can't seem to get out of its own way, right?

Sure.

Wrong.

The Titans marched into Houston and raced out to a 17-7 lead that quickly evaporated.

A classic Levis pick-six, though, put the Texans back in front.

Finally, they were finding themselves.

Surely they would hold on to this lead against the team with the worst second half point differential in football, right?

Wrong again.

Jiga Conquo, 70 yards to the end zone, a missed field goal from just 28 yards out, and a CJ Stroud safety ended the Texans' hopes and secured a 32-27 win for Tennessee.

I like when Justin Mark reaches that higher octave.

You know, he reaches the top of his range in his vocal renderings of these games.

It kind of takes me on a roller coaster ride.

It does.

You know, when some people,

if they have a bit of a nervous energy to them when they answer the phone, like their voice goes up, it happens to, it can be men or women again, but like their entire octave and voice changes.

Justin, like, I'm not senior at that level, but like there's an excitement and a passion that creates a similar reaction to my ears.

Well, maybe it's because the Titans upset the quote-unquote mighty Texans.

And, you know, Justin,

this is progress.

And I know the, you know,

Mr.

Mayo is somebody that has been hot and cold with the fan base.

May yo game day be delicious.

So far, Will's has certainly been delicious.

Oh, God.

It was Ross, Ross Tucker quoting the May Yo Game day be delicious Will Levis ad during the game.

All right, I'm cool with Ross.

No, like,

so

earlier or before the season kicked off, there was an idea that Levis could be the guy.

Then by like week four, I feel like at least you're my surrogate for Titans fans.

You guys are out.

Are you starting to buy in again on Captain Mayo?

Yeah, I think I am, actually, and I think Titans fans are.

He's played three good games in a row against three very good defenses, Chargers, Vikings, Texans.

Those are good Ds.

And he's put up numbers against these teams.

He was averaging like 160 passing yards a game before his shoulder injury.

And since coming back, he's throwing for, he had 278 passing yards today.

He's been throwing 98-yard touchdowns.

He had a 63-yard bomb to Calvin Ridley in this game, a big touchdown to Nick Westbrook Akina.

The mistakes are still...

there at times, but the consistency is getting a lot better.

And having a three-game stretch where he plays pretty good football all three games is not something he's done before and even the pick six he threw felt more like a good defensive play and maybe a bad decision in the moment but it's the type of bad decision that we see even the best quarterbacks make we see the worst quarterbacks make them too it wasn't like the early season bad decisions where he's like rolling the ball backwards to a running back or chucking it underhanded out of bounds to the sideline for the bears to return for a pick six right it's a different kind of mistake i think so if he continues to play like this you can mitigate the, he is still really, really bad at navigating pressure.

That's something you can start to mitigate and improve on as long as you're taking other strides.

And he is taking those other strides.

Combined with the options available in the draft and free agency, it's like you might as well just see if he can keep getting better for one more season.

He's definitely producing, but

he created this incredible statistic today.

In the first half, I read that he had 146.5 passer rating and absorbed seven sacks.

And I don't really ever recall that occurring.

In the first half?

Yeah.

In the first half, yes.

Eight on the day, but seven in the.

So is that what you say that he's walking into these or he's creating these?

Or do they have major line issues?

There were a couple times where Will Anderson, Daniel Hunter, had great pass rushes and beat the tackles and got to him.

But there were other times where he had a clean pocket.

And I guess the internal clock like went off because he was in a clean pocket, but then he's like, I've been here too long.

I've been sacked too many times this season.

I need to escape.

And he would try to escape forward and run like directly.

He tried to go through a gap between his guards and tackles, but he'd run directly into a sack.

He did it like three times in the first half.

So that's where it's like, are you giving him a little bit of grace because he had been sacked so many times and like this internal clock thing, like, I got to get out of the pocket here.

And not realizing when he actually has a good pocket to like stand in and make something happen.

So that's what, yes, he definitely, I mean, there is a lot of room to grow in that department, But his arm talent, like, this is the roller coaster.

He makes a great 63-yard pass to Calvin Ridley and then throws the pick six.

It's just an up and down thing.

But over the last three weeks, especially, it's been a lot more up than down.

And on the Texans side, it's an issue.

I mean, this is a team that had Super Bowl aspirations, and they're just not getting it done.

And their defense for the second week in a row, you know, made a scored pick six that Levis threw.

We'll get to that in a second.

But they also allowed Levis, Will Levis, no offense, to go 18 for 23 in this game.

Yes, they got all those sacks, but they couldn't get big stops down the stretch.

And then on the offensive side, Connor, you have C.J.

Stroud, who, you know, he finally threw multiple touchdowns in a game.

He hadn't done that since the middle of October, but he threw two interceptions again.

He was sacked four more times.

Houston's offensive line has now allowed 17 sacks in the last four games.

And that last possession of the game was non-competitive, ending with the safety.

They're just not very good.

That's all it is right now with Houston Texans.

They're not very good.

The interior of their offensive line continues to struggle.

And I think Stroud, when you see some of these designer zone blitzes, like Tennessee is still one of the best zone defense teams in the NFL.

And I think specifically against some of those coverages, like he's just not seeing guys.

I think he said that after the game.

There was one pick where he literally just didn't see someone.

And, you know, I think that comes with time.

But when you accelerate so fast the year before and you play in a good scheme and you have good players and all that kind of stuff, I think it masks some of the learning curve that we're now seeing on the back end for Stroud.

He has more interceptions through 12 games right now than he had in his entire rookie year.

And the Texans didn't get a first down in the second half until midway through the fourth quarter.

They'd already scored 10 points.

in the second half and retaken the lead without converting a first down.

And they finally got a drive going that ended in a field goal.

But it was not, not

the offense was not good for Houston.

I mean their first touchdown was set up by an 80-yard kick return.

So who knows if that drive goes anywhere without that.

There are major concerns here.

It's not just the offensive line.

Stroud not seeing Kenneth Murray throwing it.

He threw picks directly to Titans defenders in this game.

First one was sort of a miscommunication, but neither pick looked like you can just write it off as like, oh, there's, he'll fix that.

It's like, why is he making these kinds of plays still when we came into the season with such high expectations for him?

And just to add to that with Stroud, and it is a key, key moment in this game.

Last week, you'll remember, it was on their first possession.

It might even have been the first play from scrimmage.

A long 80-yard touchdown to Nico Collins wiped out by an illegal procedure.

In this game, 4.43 to play, first and 10 on the Tennessee 33.

The score is 30 to 27.

Stroud connects with Nico Collins, 33 yards for a touchdown.

Again, nullified.

It was an illegal shift.

And the kicker to it is C.J.

Stroud after the game said, I'm the one that blew it because I sent two different guys in motion on the play, which led to the penalty.

So, you know, that's a mental mistake by Stroud, and he's making physical mistakes.

And he's just, he's not playing in that free and easy way that made him so electrifying as a rookie.

And, you know, the sands are slipping through the hourglass at this point.

We are heading toward December, and Stroud just cannot get it figured out.

All right.

Well, let's see the Will Levis meme of the week.

So even though it was a good day for the Titans, after his pick six, Will Levis, you know, he's hustling.

He's not giving up, but he's hustling in a strange way.

I think he was also like reacting in like a, damn, I fed up.

Like, this is my reaction.

I'm upset with myself, but I'm also not going to give up on the play.

I'm going to sprint back as hard as I can, but I am going to stare at my kneecaps as I think.

Well, he looks like a track star coming out of the gate.

And then, you know, I was going to say, that seems a little kind, Mark.

He almost seems like the kid in gym class who's not quite right.

And you're doing like the sprinting drills.

And it's just like, why is he running so weird?

Well, here in this freeze frame,

I think he looks like a track star.

If you watch the whole thing, it is easy to have a different opinion, yes.

I think Justin chose a freeze frame because it was more generous for his quarterback.

I didn't choose it.

That was tweeted.

I picked a tweet that someone else made.

I didn't make the tweet.

All right,

let's stay weird and head to Washington.

And kind of a similar setup to you, Justin, on your last game.

Because, yeah, it's been a trying few weeks for the Commanders, who went from everyone's darlings in September and October to figures of suspicion in recent weeks.

But lucky for them, the Dallas Cowboys.

Pro Football's star-shaped pinata were coming to town to make everyone feel good again.

Or not, a series of mind-numbing mistakes in a chaotic, almost satanic fourth quarter doomed Washington to a 34-26 loss.

Head scratcher.

The teams here, and this is what I'm talking about.

This is the chaos.

This is the Beeslebub.

Is that how you pronounce it?

Beelzebub?

Beelzebub.

Let's just say that.

Beef.

You want to really lean into that.

The devil entered the room.

The teams combined to score 31 points in the final four minutes.

That is the most in an NFL game in more than a decade.

And a final minute missed PAT attempt by Austin Seibert that followed a miracle touchdown by Terry McLaurin will live on an infamy for the commanders who have lost three straight.

I don't even know where to begin on this game.

I mean, it was a fairly mundane game until those final four minutes,

you know, going back and forth.

And yes, there is a...

The box score is going to look different than the reality.

In the box score, let me check it it out for the team stats.

Washington finished with 412 yards, but this offense is not still in a bad place.

And they really struggled for long stretches of this game, especially early on in the game.

And I just, even though I thought with some of the play calling and then even some of the way he was moving,

that

we're getting away from the rib issue that we thought was the prime culprit here.

What we actually are seeing now is there's just something off with the offense, and I don't know.

Part of what's really missing is a downfield element.

So, Terry McLaurin isn't even targeted in this game, really, until the second half.

And his numbers are saved by, again, an absurd, I think it was 86-yard touchdown where the Cowboys just had a brutal breakdown on defense that set the stage for Cyber to miss the kick.

But yeah, the Washington offense is kind of stuck in mud.

Brian Robinson got hurt in this game, so that's not going to help matters.

And then Austin Eckler in the final second suffers what looked like a pretty nasty concussion, and you wonder what his

availability is going forward.

So yeah, starting with the commander side of things, they still have some issues to work on, and the offense just does not seem right.

I'd say one thing that I think that what was happening when, because this is like a microcosm of the Texans almost, like everyone's darling, and now we're wondering if they're just, if they're going to crater here.

But

the the Cliff Kingsbury offense we we've seen this before like from 2019 to 2022 I saw a tweet that in weeks one through eight they would they were six in points per drive and then in weeks nine through 17 they're 20th and we're I wonder if some of that is starting to it's if it's easy to find out how to diagnose this offense I think the rib injury has taken away the fact that they want to you know predicate a lot of mobility for Jaden Daniels and that's not happening right now not in the same way, to the same degree.

But he was.

They were calling design run plays in this game.

He had a rushing touchdown where he scrambled and got to the edge.

And it didn't look like Jaden Daniels is limited by the injury at this point.

And I didn't see any shot on the sideline of him wearing the heat pad.

Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but I didn't see it in this game.

I think it's schematic, and there are some...

If the Dallas Cowboys, this Dallas Cowboys defense that Mike Zimmer has been getting embarrassed on a weekly basis can figure you out.

That means everyone's going to be able to figure you out.

So, yeah, I think it's, you know,

it is a major issue moving forward for Washington.

I do wonder if the lack of confidence in Cliff played a hand in.

Dan Quinn said after the game that he had no thought of going for two when they scored

what would have been the game-tying touchdown with an extra-point field goal.

And what's interesting about that was, so Austin Seibert missed the two games heading into into this week with the hip issue.

So clearly he's a little bit banged up.

They miss a kick earlier in the game.

And then

when they get the kick blocked by the Cowboys, Seibert, I went back and I watched it again, gets absolutely demolished on that play.

And so you're going with a kicker who's already missed a kick.

Your special teams has kind of been falling apart throughout the day.

He's been hurt and he got crushed in that game.

And you're going with that over,

you know, your offensive coordinator and one of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the NFL.

And you got a two-point conversion on the drive prior.

So that whole thing blew my mind, the decision-making process.

But I do wonder if Cliff didn't have another play he liked.

You know, if there was some sort of a situation where there was some lack of faith in that moment, you know.

Yeah, there was no hesitation.

They showed Quinn immediately when McLaurin goes in, and he's holding up his finger and number one, number one, to kick the extra point.

So they thought that was the right play.

And also, you know, there is like the mechanics of it all.

I'm trying to remember if they had any timeouts.

I don't think they had any timeouts left.

And

when there is a play like that and the celebration that's going on to be able to get to the huddle and then go for two, it would have been a challenge.

But yeah, I mean, given Seibert's struggles and, you know, it was one of the worst special teams games you'll ever see because they gave up two kickoff returns for touchdowns.

In fact,

I'd venture to say that poor Austin Seibert, and again, when you see these kickers mess up, all you can think to yourself is, this is the hardest job in the world.

It is brutal.

I mean, the worst feeling in the world.

He might have just had the worst two-play sequence in kicker history, okay?

So he shanks that PAT after, again, just, you could not have a more dramatic moment in your home stadium connecting on this miracle touchdown.

It was Minneapolis miracle level unlikely.

And terrible job by the Dallas defense, which all they had to do is tackle

McLaurin in bounds, and the game's probably over.

And they just played it terribly.

And that's, you know, a microcosm of their season and their defense this year.

But so after all that celebration and all that jubilation, he shanks the PAT, and then he comes back on the field and he, you know, maybe he can kick an extra point.

I mean, maybe he could kick the outside kick and they get the ball back and maybe there's a happy ending here.

He squibs it directly to, I mean, directly to the Cowboys,

Wanya Thomas, who just, it pops right into his chest and he runs right through the middle of the field for a 43-yard touchdown.

It was insane

to put Dallas up eight with 14 seconds left.

And like,

here's

Mike McCarthy, who hasn't had much to celebrate this year.

But McCarthy talking about just the menace, because even then they cut to the Cowboy sideline.

I'm telling you this was like demented satanic shit going on they cut to the Dallas sideline and they're all pissed because they're like that guy should have just gone down and we could have nailed it out but now Washington still has a chance and we don't want to give anybody a chance in this game here's Quinn here's McCarthy on just the wild ending then we got down to the end here and it was just a game since situational extravaganza i mean it's just we

i mean you know it's like yahtzee you know i we everything was in there so um just a lot of situational football things to learn from things things we work on all the time, but you still got to execute in those spots.

It's funny because, you know, I have a connection to Zaddy, and extravaganza is one of my favorite words.

Well, I love how he said that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the Cowboys survive in Washington.

Man, they've had some tough losses.

They came down, of course, to a Hail Mary again.

And same thing.

Jaden Daniels, like happened with Chicago, is scrambling around.

He gets the ball in the air.

But this time, the Cowboys finally did something right, executed that correctly, batted it down.

Game game over.

Big questions in Washington and Dallas for once has something to be happy about.

At one point they showed Jerry Jones in like late in the fourth quarter and I thought this was so funny.

Somehow there was just a

marvelous like overpowering beam of sunlight going right into his face.

I don't know what it is, but the Cowboys in the sun pain, like it just, it finds, it finds a way.

He was like not even smiling at the end of this game

from what I saw.

I I think even

Jarrah's been pretty protected this year in his Jara bubble, I think, but I think he finally got word that they suck.

So he wasn't really celebrating too hard.

All right, let's move.

Connor, you're up.

Let's head to Lucas Oil.

The Detroit Lions beat the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday 24-6.

Jameer Gibbs had two rushing touchdowns.

Amon Ross, St.

Brown, and Jamison Williams combined for 11 catches and 126 receiving yards.

And on the Colts side, Anthony Richardson made some great throws, but also redacted.

Like, there was all these times when his receivers dropped passes, or there was holding penalties called, or the song he didn't like was playing when he threw, or the smell of popcorn wafted through the air.

And we all know how much Anthony hates popcorn.

And he made this super awesome throw to Alec Pearson.

Tight coverage, however, redacted.

Richardson finished the game 11 of 28 for 172 yards in a total QBR of redacted.

You know, Connor, I like that you're spoiling for a fight and I will stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

It drives me crazy that the Football Cogna Sente

has to rally around Anthony Richardson and protect him no matter what.

And I know you're now you hear me say that, all you people that are also in this protection group,

that they're like, oh, how dare you?

Don't study the box score.

Watch the games.

Okay, here's Connor Orr.

Here is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated that studied this game.

Connor,

tell us how did Anthony Richardson play?

The box score sucked, but how did he actually play?

And what does it mean for the Colts?

You want to get nuts?

Let's get nuts.

Let's talk about every incompletion.

I have them all listed right here.

If you would like.

So

we have a throw out of the end zone, which, okay.

We have a medium-level bad miss overthrow of Alec Pierce.

You have an awful drop by Ogletree, who, if you want to paint a villain of this game, he had an awful drop, an awful penalty in this game.

You had a couple of, you know, missed incompletions that I would count as sort of like a two out of ten on the bad scale, a lot of these guys.

One where he should have led Josh Downs on an in-breaking route, had him wide open.

That was a miss.

You had a bad drop by Kyle Granson or Kylan Granson.

You have one where he threw it up when he was about to get a sack.

You have a flea flicker where he the ball was thrown back at his feet.

So he actually had to pick it up and then he short hopped it.

A free play where he just throws it into coverage.

Beautiful deep ball to Ashton Doolin, but he couldn't get his second foot in.

One where he's hit.

It's not called a fumble for some reason

almost by the end zone, and then it's ruled an incomplete pass.

And then, like, two plays later, he throws in a triple coverage.

The ball's batted around.

It's almost intercepted.

Another throwaway to nowhere.

Another one, a deep shot that kind of missed.

It was a little tad long, and then a throwaway under pressure.

So

this is what we have to do every time now.

And we're going to take up five minutes every time talking about it.

That's fine.

And it's not our fault.

It is not the fault of the Heed the Call podcast that we have to do this because there is an echo chamber running a propaganda campaign that if you say that Anthony Richardson is not good right now, you are somehow un-American and we can't stand for this.

Here's the truth, okay?

Like, yes,

there were some bad drops.

There were some really bad drops in this game.

One in particular that was

backbreaking.

It was in the end zone.

I mean, the guy had the ball

and it was early on in the game.

The Colts actually had a really good first drive.

But there's other times when he's just not seeing it.

And you can take...

I wouldn't say to this extreme, but what if we were to do this for Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert, like, or, you know, all these other guys who have penalties, back-breaking penalties and all this?

And I would say this too, that the drops are bad, but the worst parts of what's going on with Indianapolis, like they get called for bad holding penalties.

You know, like they, there's all this weird stuff that, yes, like Anthony Richardson is probably like, oh, he's okay.

He's fine.

Wide receivers are dropping passes, but then there's all this stuff going on.

And we're making it such a black and white conversation when I really don't think it is.

Why does this echo chamber exist?

Like,

why are we defending this player?

If it were someone else, we would not be here.

Like,

doesn't some of it speak for itself?

Extremely raw college prospect with very few starts and being thrown into a much more complex environment.

And it's like on Shane Steichen to fix all that in a handful of starts?

It's interesting to me because, like, I do think Shane Steichen is doing a pretty good job.

The Lions...

got in.

And this is the Lions we're talking about, too, right?

I mean, it's one of the best teams in the NFL.

They were in Anthony Richardson's face a lot during this game.

They brought pressure on third downs.

They were daring him to figure it out.

Could Shane Steichen have mixed up the play calling a little bit more?

Could he have thrown a couple more man-beaters in there?

I don't know, possibly, you know, and you can argue that stuff to no end.

But I think it's just, it's equal parts on everybody.

Like, Anthony Richardson makes some bad plays in every game.

He misses dialed-up deep shots in every game.

But then does it make up for it when he then gets it back and throws this beautiful ball to Alec Pierce in tight coverage and it's like a tight window throw.

I don't know.

It's like, it's like living with a problem gambler and then being like, yeah, like he almost loses our mortgage every month, but then like right at the end of Pepperdine St.

Mary's at midnight the night before, like also wins back like most of the money so we don't miss our payment.

I don't know what the, like, is that a bad, is that a bad thing?

I don't know.

It just doesn't seem to me to be like a fun way to live your life.

So people dug in with the Joe Flacco

the benching, and then now people are desperate to be proven right.

That's kind of how it feels to me.

And then there are thought leaders on social media that are just repeating and pounding the table.

And I just think

it's not helpful to the discourse when you're cherry-picking and then ignoring other things.

And this is not to say, because this is the other thing.

I can just picture it now, Connor, that we'll be catching criticism because we want this guy to fail.

I don't care.

I don't have a dog in the race here.

I root for him to be successful because he's a human being.

It seems like a good guy.

It's not, there's nothing personal here.

It's just he's a very, very inconsistent raw quarterback, and I think it costs the Colts every week.

On the Lions side, Connor, like, unless you had something that you want to put a bow on that, please do.

Then let's touch on the team that really matters here, the 10-1 Lions.

I would just say that I do think that the animus stems from the Joe Flacco conversation.

And I will just say this to put a bow on it.

I've written this.

I believe this wholeheartedly.

Yes, the answer is theoretically in the perfect world to allow Anthony Richardson to play and to develop and to get the reps and to do all this stuff.

But if you're a coach, you have to win games in order to remain the coach.

And that you can't just like we can't ignore this part of the fantasy world.

Like, I wish that all everybody in all walks of life were allowed to develop fully into their roles before getting fired or before, you know, losing their jobs, but it just doesn't exist that way.

And it just, that part of it, just how you don't get how the nfl operates is just mind-boggling to me i don't know that that's the part that really bothers me but anyway let's talk about the lions because there's a lot of cool stuff yeah let's touch on the lions go ahead so uh jameer gibbs uh david montgomery um so first season ever in NFL history where in back-to-back seasons, your two running backs scored 10 or more rushing touchdowns each, which is really, really neat.

Wow.

November 24th, Connor.

Yeah.

Pretty wild.

We knew this was going to be a big Amon Ross St.

Brown game.

So, but because the Colts play a lot of zone defense, did not expect them to play this much zone defense.

40 snaps that the Lions played the Colts on, with the Colts on defense.

39 of them, they were in zone.

Clearly, they were just trying to kind of keep a lid on this team.

And I guess to some degree, we're effective in that.

I mean, it wasn't, you know, they didn't give up 50 points.

They didn't get curb stomped in this.

But, um, and I would say my only other lion's note here as I'm going through and just trying to calm down from the part of it before is another big helmet-to-helmet collision for Brian Branch that he got flagged for.

That's going to be something that we have to watch just because this happened in the Packers game.

He got tossed out of the Packers game for that.

I thought it was a bogus toss, but now this has happened two times in the span of three games.

I think he's your defensive signal caller.

If he's out of that game, you know, I think it does kind of, it makes a big difference.

So.

All right.

Let's take a break.

And when we get back, we continue to roll through week 12.

I love Fired Up Connor Orr.

Nothing better in the world.

There's nothing better.

We'll be right back.

Heed the call.

Dan Hansis and Mark Sessler is on Underdog.

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You know, Dan, we had a softball team for years and I touted myself as the manager and it's because I couldn't see anything.

So it's like, who wants to put me at the plate?

So, it's like time, it's like I'm an adult, it's time to get glasses.

And I walked by Warby Parker here in LA and like got a great pair of glasses.

And I look up at trees now, I can see the leaves.

I couldn't see anything before.

Warby Parker changed all that.

Mark, I get it.

And we would have loved to bat you clean up and had you at center field for that softball team.

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All right.

We are back.

Before we get back into the games, I just want to offer up something of a.

It's going to be a new tradition, Sess Dog.

We watch a lot of commercials on Sundays.

Yes.

And I think we're all, no matter who you voted for,

a couple weeks ago, everyone was relieved that we're no longer being bombarded by political ads.

But instead, now we're getting back to the good old days of broadcast television shows.

And Connor, I know this is near and dear to you, as someone who still is plugged in and all that.

So, here are my broadcast TV power rankings 2024.

These are the shows that I think are the best shows, but is based solely on commercials.

I haven't seen any of these shows because I'm not 68 years old.

However, these are my choices.

Number one, Matlock is a lady now on CBS.

The great dame Kathy Bates.

Number two, doctor hit her head and now can't remember shit.

That's on Fox.

I think it's actually just called Doc, but that's what I know it as.

Tough, bad beat.

She's in a car accident, Mark.

Have you seen this commercial?

We've all seen the commercials.

Yeah, I've seen it.

You're filling in the blanks on what's occurring plot-wise here.

I don't understand why she's still operating at all.

Well, she was gifted.

She was a gifted doctor, and she gets in a car accident.

She whacks her head.

She wakes up after a coma of some kind.

And, you know, is she ever going to be the same doctor?

We don't know.

She's going back into practice, but also her husband left her while she was in a coma.

Bad beat for doc.

Number three, Damon Wayans one and Damon Wayans two.

That's what I call it.

It's actually called Papa's House.

This is a situational comedy that airs on CBS, apparently.

Number four, the prisoners are somehow firefighters now.

This is one of my favorite shows.

It's been out for a few years.

Every commercial just is, it's just batshit crazy.

Basically,

I remember some of the initial commercials.

These are firefighters.

These are prisoners that were like on death row.

They're like, hey, we're going to kill you unless you go into fire country and put out a bunch of fires.

That's a premise, Connor Orr.

Aren't like how

they're going to be watching because they started fires, potentially?

I don't know.

Maybe there's a firebug amongst the group that has expert knowledge.

It's a great, great hook, and we should get in touch with CBS if they don't have that character in the show, Mark.

And number five, Bob Harps, Hearts, Abishola.

Also on CBS.

I don't even think this is on the air anymore, but I just like it.

That's an old hit.

I remember that one.

We talked about that before.

The first program to use an emoji in the title, so I like it.

So there you go.

Any thoughts on that, Mark?

I can't get my mind off of the doctor with the bandage wrapped around her head.

And like, well, you know, when you make a decision to go see a medical professional, like, it's not the first person I'd choose.

It wouldn't be at the top of my list.

Like, yeah, if you're watching this on YouTube,

youtube.com/slash

Heed the Call pod, you'll see

she has some bruising around the cheekbone area.

So in the commercial, you actually see her face smash against her side window upon impact.

And then she's got the bandage around her head.

So major head injury.

She can't remember shit, but she's still a gifted doctor.

And it's like, what comes next?

I don't know.

I don't think she knows what comes next.

And you can see in this pensive shot, Connor, that

there's a brilliance to her, but also a curiosity and anxiety about what comes next.

Definitely anxiety.

That should be number one.

Yeah.

See,

there used to be one called Ghosts.

And

Ghosts is still on the arc.

So every day,

this is like a weird journalism-only thing, but you get pitch emails from PR people.

And every day, literally every day, for like a four and a half month span, it was like, would you like to interview the co-star of Ghosts, who's a huge Jaguars fan?

And I got that email every day for four months.

And I was like, if this comes into my inbox one more time, I'm going to burn down a building.

Like it was, it made me so angry.

I feel like it would be a good kind of article to write an article about getting pitched over and over again by the Jaguars ghost actor.

I feel like that would be something that I would have to do.

What's the second question?

It's like, so you're a Jaguars fan, huh?

It's like, all right.

See ya.

Mark Sessler, let's head to Charlotte, where the Chiefs obviously are going to take care of business, right?

You don't have to like it.

You might be tired of it, but this isn't about you.

When you need him the most, Patrick Mahomes reveals himself to be a reliable mixture of Jesus, Buddha, Mao Cez Hung, Mother Mira, and Gandalf the White.

Inside the two-minute warning and fending off a reborn Bryce Young, Mahomes does it again.

A 32-yard rumble down the sideline to help set up the inevitable game-winning field goal by a kicker who was a hidden figure in our society mere weeks weeks ago.

This would have been a fatal loss after the Buffalo tumble, but these Chiefs always find a way.

Don't like it?

Tough titties.

Kansas City 30, Carolina 27.

But I want to say one thing before we dive into it, that

that was the play of the game, and that's how Chiefs this was at the end.

But the Carolina Panthers, who were an absolute car crash a month ago, are a different type of team right now.

And it starts with Bryce Young playing in a way that absolutely changed how I feel about him, what his future is.

And I think it comes down to good coaching.

But this team is starting to look very different.

And they gave the Chiefs a lot of problems today and beat up Patrick Mahomes.

Where's the NFL Cognicenti on Bryce Young?

I started talking about this guy six weeks ago that he was having great turnaround starts.

He was playing well.

He was making good situational throws.

And everyone said he was ass and needed to get kicked out of Carolina.

Where's everybody defending Bryce Young.

That's what I was on that.

He was put on the bench.

He was put on the bench and then when he came back started playing really, really well.

He was blitzed on 40% of his throws today by one of the best defenses in the NFL and he was 11 of 14 against against the Blitz.

Well we have this

we have the throw chart.

We should take a look at it because it's pretty insane what they did with him today.

And this is why I think Dave Canalis has a lot to do with this.

But this is one of these charts where it shows the positive throws.

It shows that Bryce Young is making big plays all over the field versus one of these

downfield, right?

It's not just like scattered back at the line of scrimmage.

I mean, this is a different player doing things that you couldn't have conceived he'd be doing a month ago.

I mean, I think it's a pretty fascinating story here for a player that we were saying could have been traded a couple weeks ago.

Yeah, and that's kind of what that's what I was saying about everyone got got so upset that Anthony Richardson was put on the bench, but Bryce Young was put on the bench because he was struggling.

And they put in a veteran late 30s quarterback, in this case, Andy Dalton,

and it allowed Young to just reset.

And that's okay.

And it doesn't mean that you're somehow being, you know, not showing the proper class towards your high draft pick.

It means like you're trying to help him.

And this is hard.

And if you remember what he looked like before he went to the bench and disappeared for a few weeks, when even on just screen passes, he's doing that little jump and he was falling away and his footwork was outrageous,

that this is real progress.

And Mark, what happens at the end of this game?

Because I know they're down eight.

And does he take them down the field?

Like, how did they get where they got to push Mahomes and the Chiefs to the limit?

So,

first of all, Adam Thielen is a big story here.

It was a pretty exemplary it kind of showed to me where Bryce Young was at this point because there is a deep shot to Adam Thielen in the end zone, okay?

And it's it dials up a defensive pass interference on the Chiefs.

That's what set them up at first and goal.

And then Chuba Hubbard pounds it in.

And then

there's a two-point incompletion that basically puts them back down.

But there's another Chiefs DPI.

This was a meltdown for the Chiefs, and then Hubbard races in for the two-point, allowing them to complete the eight-point

comeback.

And

this was a day, too, where

Bryce Young was doing this.

He was in control of the game and in control of drives.

And I think this was a moment where it's like, go do this.

And he did it.

But the problem is you leave Mahomes just inside the two-minute warning.

And we've seen that story before.

And I thought it was interesting how,

you know, before the big run, the big scramble by Mahomes, he threw downfield and it was incomplete.

And the Chiefs are, you know, wide receiver jumped up and they're looking for the laundry.

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

It doesn't always go that way for you, Kansas, and you might have to earn it.

And sure enough, before I could even get that thought out of my mouth, there he is rumbling down the sideline.

And once again, Connor, I know this is on your radar.

It seems like defenders are afraid to put a lick on Mahomes because they think they're getting,

you know, goaded into a late hit out of bounds.

And instead, he just keeps down that sideline.

Let's listen to Mahomes on that big play he made with his legs to set up the win.

I think it's just certain times in games.

It's not like a pre-planned stuff.

It's just whenever it comes down to it and you got to make the play, I feel like I try to go out there and make the play.

And that's why I feel like it happens kind of later in games sometimes than in the playoffs.

You don't want to slide.

You have to kind of put your body out there, knowing that you can take hits and stuff like that.

But we've been able to make some big runs and some big moments.

That's what he does, Sess Dog.

That's what he does.

It looked a lot like the

massive moments he created in multiple Super Bowls with his legs when he supposedly had a

totally banged up ankle and he somehow becomes even more powerful on the ground.

Supposedly,

certainly.

What ends up with you and Orr just trying to negate the legend of Mahomes?

He's an all-timer.

I'm not.

No, I'm not.

I'm sort of saying this is, look at, like, whether you like it or not, if people are sick of this, like, it's actually pretty incredible how he does this time and again and how reliably the Chiefs pull this off.

But I think he added the mobility element of his game two seasons ago, and it completely changed what he can do.

People don't realize, I have a lot of Eagles fan friends being from where I'm from, the Patrick Mahomes faked his ankle injury

conspiracy is one of the deeper and more widely believed conspiracy theories in all football that is not talked about.

Like, that still very much hurts a lot of people's feelings.

So, I'm just sometimes you need to stand up for those people, and I do.

All right.

I respect that.

And I also respect that Travis Kelsey is never going to be the focal point of this offense again.

Interesting to me that you lose Hollywood Brown, you lose Rashi Rice, and you're like, okay, now it's going to be Travis Kelsey.

And Kelsey does make impacts throughout the game, but it's Noah Gray that's become like a more trusted red zone option for Patrick Mahomes now.

And, you know, my final thought on the game, Arc, is like, this is what the Chiefs do.

I talked about it on Thursday.

It's like, this isn't going to be a blowout.

The Chiefs play with their food.

They're not explosive like the old days.

The Panthers are playing better.

And sure enough, this game went right down to the edge.

But again,

with the exception of obviously last week, they always make the play in the end.

And that's what makes them so maddening.

Do you want to hear a wild stat that underlines that?

Yes.

So out of all of the losses that Patrick Mahomes has ever had,

only five of them have come,

Only five of those losses were games that were more than one possession away from being a victory.

How insane is that?

Fine.

It is, but they do feel that way right now.

Don't that like it feels like every one of these dog fights comes down to him needing to do something like this because it's like they don't blow teams out and they're comfortable with that, it feels like.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, let's move on.

Justin, let's go to Seattle.

The NFC West, hard to figure out.

Two teams wrestling for control of the NFC West did battle in Seattle.

Arizona entered the game on a four-game win streak, averaging more than 26 points per game over that stretch, but Mike McDonald's defense was not having any of that.

The Seahawks stifled any semblance of offense from Kyler Murray and the Cardinals today.

Two and a half sacks from Leonard Williams.

A pick six by Kobe Bryant, who is named after the legendary Kobe Bryant.

Julian Love was flying all over the field.

This is what Seahawks fans envisioned when Mike McDonald was hired.

Seattle, Downs, Arizona, 16-6 to move into a first-place tie in the NFC West.

Yeah, good for Michael Sean Dugar,

our Thursday preview show buddy and the beat reporter for the Seattle Seahawks.

This seemed like a team that was

trending towards irrelevance, Justin.

And yet,

as you point out beautifully there, it's like that's what they've been waiting all year is McDonald's brought in as a guy that could have their defense

jump up to a higher level than it was in the final years under Pete Carroll.

And if they can combine big defense with their offense, which is always going to make plays,

this is a winning formula and it was today.

I think the defense has finally come on.

And something that I don't think gets talked about enough is when Mike McDonald took over as the defensive coordinator for Baltimore, it took him a couple of months to get that defense really gelling and playing at a high level.

And he was kind of famous amongst Ravens fans.

And I remember doing a lot of research on Mike McDonald because he was a potential candidate for the Titans head coach.

So I learned a lot about him and just the fact that like he made a lot of key adjustments.

Once he saw his personnel on the field, he started to deploy them in different ways to take advantage of their strengths.

And I think you're starting to see that with these Seahawks players.

Ernest Jones, who they just traded for at the deadline, led the team in tackles today, had 10.

Julian Love, like, I can't talk enough about the safety Julian Love.

He was everywhere on the field.

He almost had a crazy interception.

Couldn't get down inbounds on the sideline, but was making plays throughout the game.

And really, like, the Cardinals did not put a real drive together in this game until the fourth quarter.

And even the drives they did put together, they ended up like shooting themselves in the foot with dumb penalties, holding penalties.

Marvin Harrison Jr.

couldn't get his feet down inbounds.

Kyler Murray on a fourth and two overthrows his target, scrambling out of the pocket.

Kobe Bryant takes it to the house.

Like the defense was making huge plays.

And even though the Cardinals' defense played pretty well, I mean, they held him to 16 points.

They had a end zone, red zone interception.

It wasn't enough.

They did, like, the offense didn't give them enough support.

And that's how Mike McDonald's Ravens' defense has just suffocated you.

Emphasis on turnovers, emphasis on game-changing plays, not just forcing a punt.

Although this game did open with like a punt fest, it was punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, punt, kind of boring in the beginning.

I just feel like this is this version of the Seahawks can grind out a game.

Geno can make the right play.

Jackson Smith and Jigba's really coming along the last few weeks.

He's was a huge part of their big scoring drive in this game.

And I, I was very impressed by the Seahawks because not only did they win this game somewhat convincingly with a 10-point win, holding their opponent to so little offense, but this Cardinals team was on a four-game win streak.

They're playing really well.

We were talking about them, Mark's been talking about them being like a team that has a chance to go to the NFC championship game.

So, this is a quality, quality win in the division.

Position Seattle to make a run at this thing over the last few games of the season here.

All right,

Justin, well said.

Mark, we talked about it on Thursday.

There was a concern that you might put a voodoo curse on the Cardinals, as you're known to do when you really get behind a team.

And this is not a good start.

This is a troubling start to your post-prediction of Cardinals' greatness.

You are absolutely, that is very fair.

You are correct.

To watch what happened today, and when you take...

I asked Justin to pull up some voodoo music, and this is what we got.

When you take James Conner and you hold him to eight yards on seven attempts and completely stymie their ground game, you're making them uncomfortable.

So that's what this defense does.

It takes you out of your identity.

And I mean, Kyler Murray was flipping out by the end of this game.

I will say this:

if we walk around saying that the season doesn't begin until after Thanksgiving, then I'm not wrong about anything yet.

Let's wait and see.

That's another way to look at it.

Yeah, I guess it is.

Jason Zummalt, our buddy, the voice of God, for

heed the call, you know, texted during the end of the game, like, seriously, what the hell did the Cardinals do during their buy?

Like, because the team that showed up here.

Shut your mouth.

Yeah, like...

Don't talk about them.

Yeah, like that's

Kyler Murray pressured 16 times, five sacks.

They could not punch the ball into the end zone.

So Cardinals, again, continue to be a team that is highs and lows, mystifying, tough to figure out.

In Mark's defense, they almost had that pick of Gino at the end that could have potentially been like a game-altering.

That would have been huge.

Yeah, that looked like a game.

And also, if they don't make the long field goal, if Seattle, and they did, so credit to Seattle, who's at Jason Myers, if he doesn't hit that, the Cardinals are set up at midfield with a chance as well.

And they also had a chance to do the whole field goal, go for an on-side kick thing at the end, but they missed the field goal when it was like, you're running out of time to go for the touchdown here.

Just kick the field goal and then kick the on-side kick.

They never had a chance because they missed the field goal, but it was a day where on-side kicks apparently were huge swing moments.

Well, in the rain, too.

But

you never know.

The Cardinals were a handful of plays away from this being a different game.

I mentioned

they scored a touchdown, but Paris Johnson got flagged for holding, so it came back.

And they scored a touchdown on the next play, but Marvin Harrison Jr.

was just out of bounds.

So that didn't count either.

The interception you just mentioned, that fourth down play, like if they pick it, if they pick that up instead of having Kyler Murray flushed out of the pocket, who knows?

So they had a few moments where they beat themselves and a couple just very short positive notes on the Cardinals.

Justin, to that very issue,

everyone's panicking, like at the end of the third quarter, telling me that I've jinxed the entire organization.

They didn't lose by 45 points.

Like a lot of little tiny things added up to a tight loss to division.

No panic.

No panic.

Just simply.

Well, no, I mean, it's like, but every time I looked up

at the text scenario, it's like, I have like 14 messages telling me that, you know, and most of them are coming from Justin.

I understand what you're saying.

Yeah, I feel like Justin was laying it on pretty thick, I guess.

Well, this is my game, so I was watching it closely.

But

Kyler Murray.

There was one in particular.

Wait, there was one in particular that you sent that I was thinking to myself, like, man, I feel like he knows Mark by now, but like, he's got to be careful of this because sess dog.

You got to walk up to that line with the sess dog.

Uh, here it is.

Um, after the missed field goal in the final seconds, Chad Ryland makes that kick if Mark didn't jump on the Cardinals' bandwagon.

No doubt in my mind.

Oh, come on, step sword.

The producer playing with fire.

Yes, he is.

The two quick notes were that Kyler Murray set a franchise record with his 20th consecutive completion at the very start of this game, covering last week and this week.

And also, just we got a shout out to Trey McBride.

Trey McBride is a top tight end in this league.

He had 130-something yards in this game.

He was almost half of Kyler Murray's passing yards.

Without him, I don't know where they would be.

I mean, there'd be a lot more talk about Marvin Harrison Jr.

kind of not meeting expectations out of the gate, but thank God the Cardinals have Trey McBride.

Yeah, and we're post-Gronk, obviously, and now we're post-Travis Kelsey as like a superstar talent.

So it's like a new crop.

And obviously,

you're seeing with the Raiders, a rookie that's tearing the league up.

And

you see here as well, big time, big time production every single week.

All right.

Let's move on.

Up next, we head to the desert of Las Vegas.

Ooh, John T.

Bo is a bro.

Bro is a bow.

Bo Bo is a bro bro.

Listen, they can't all be winners, guys.

This is the lead

analysis to the latest Broncos conquest.

A workmanlike 29-19 victory over the Raiders at Allegiance Stadium.

Bo Nicks.

The bow who is a bro passed for 273 yards, two touchdown passes, setting the Raiders team record for touchdown passes.

Denver team record, rather.

And the Broncos are suddenly 7-5.

And if you look at the AFC playoff picture, you know, with the Bengals scuffling and the Colts, who the Colts are, and, you know, this, you know, you have the Dolphins on the outside looking at it.

Like the Broncos, it is all there for them with a favorable schedule ahead.

So the Broncos get it done again, and the Raiders have lost seven consecutive games, and they've now also lost Gardner Minchu, who was tackled and taken to the ground hard in the fourth quarter.

Immediately, it looked like a potential clavicle situation, and sure enough, it's a broken collarbone for the veteran quarterback.

He is done for the year.

So, I guess the only positive there is that Antonio Pierce can't bench him anymore.

But Gardner Minchu's pretty frustrating

debut season with the Raiders.

One that I thought kind of went into it feeling like, ah, this feels like a good sensibility match, Minchu and the Raiders.

It just, it did not quite work out, and I don't imagine he's going to get another shot of it next year.

So his journey will go on.

But the story is the Broncos.

And Nick's wasn't as locked in as he was last week when he was just a machine.

But 25 of 42.

And

his 18-yard touchdown pass to Cortland Sutton was a beauty that was just dropped in the bucket.

And he later hooked up with Sutton again on a play where he kind of scrambled out of the the pocket and then just threw a dart to the back of the end zone.

Sutton, perfect timing, gets both feet down.

And he just runs the offense with such confidence.

And the kids just got it.

And

you could tell that

the team has totally bought in on this young passer.

And you could see it in his eyes.

There was one interaction in this game.

Do we have that tweet, Justin, where he's jawing back and forth, and then the referee comes in and hits him with a hell hell no, which is funny.

But what I was kind of looking at was Bo Nix's eyes as he's glaring at Wilson of Las Vegas.

It's like, this guy's a fucking dog.

And you combine dog mentality with confidence.

That's kind of the Baker recipe for being a quarterback that players get behind.

So it does not surprise me that he is, you know, being very popular in that locker room.

But it's

such a big thing to be able to come out and play that well and to, you know, that's instrumental in turning everything around.

And, you know, one thing that I kind of noticed was how things turned around for Caleb Williams when he was getting a lot of his veteran targets involved.

I mean, Courtland Sutton was an animal in this game.

Bo Nix knows how to feed the guys to get everybody on board with them, too.

Like, I think he just has a very broad understanding of how to make this work.

I mean, I think he would say that, you know, he had to do it at Auburn.

He had to do it at Oregon.

He's kind of been doing this his entire career, but to be able to do it in Denver, in this spot, this team is eating historic amounts of dead cap space.

It's really cool.

Isn't it like an argument for

whenever draft time comes around, it's like this player is two years older than most quarterbacks, so it's a huge negative.

But this is like the most experienced college quarterback we've ever seen, and he's older, and like,

I think that factors in.

But I also just think that the contrast in this game of how the Raiders and their head coach have handled that quarterback situation, which is a complete disaster and today ended in

the darkest edge of it all, compared to Sean Payton and what he's done with Bo Nix.

And it's hard to get, we were on Sky State and we talked about how it's kind of hard to give Sean Payton a ton of credit because there's people that just kind of find him.

You know, he doesn't always do himself favors interpersonally from anecdotes and things you hear.

But

this is like a coach of the year type guy.

Like this, he's turned around an organization that was

in a terrible situation with money.

And you take a rookie quarterback and he's playing like this.

Like, that's the thing that I think makes Sean Payton special that we thought he would be.

And it's happening now.

Yeah.

And like,

well, I remember talking about it on the old show when the Russell Wilson decision was made.

It was like, oh my God, they're eating so much cap space.

They're not going to be able to be competitive for two years.

Or you hire the right head coach, you start building in a smart way, and then you hit on a rookie quarterback, and you could use those years when you're in cap-held to just develop the machine.

They're not going to win the Super Bowl this year, but they're going to potentially make the playoffs.

In fact, I think they will be the seventh wild card or the seventh playoff team in the AFC when you look at the way the schedule shakes out.

And this is big-time progress, and I like that as a coach of the year pick.

Like, not that Sean Payton needs to be told that he's great again in his life, but like, okay, like he definitely deserves it.

And the Raiders, I mean, what a, real quick on the Raiders before we move on because we got to keep moving, but like the Raiders, in addition to now losing Gardner Minshew, they played this game without their top two running backs, and they couldn't run the football when they were healthy.

They were missing two starters of cornerback.

They were missing two of their defensive linemen.

They were missing one of their safeties.

They didn't even have their special teams coach, Tom McMahon.

No reason was given.

He just was not at the game for, you know, I don't know.

We'll find out more.

But like, it just, it's a lost year.

And I wonder, yeah, if Antonio Pierce and somebody hit me up on Twitter and said, hey, you guys should check in on the hot butts and like where people, where things stand as we head toward Thanksgiving and the home stretch of the regular season.

Maybe gang will do that this week in our Thanksgiving preview episode.

We could pair it up with a little hot butt check-in.

Any other thoughts before we move on, guys?

Antonio Pierce called a fake putt, Mr.

Conservative.

Good for him.

It was a good fake putt, too.

That tells you how desperate.

Oh, it was was beautiful.

Without the special teams.

Beautifully done.

Yeah, exactly.

When that happens, when the coach isn't there, the most prominent example is your boy Stefansky, Mark, when he was in his basement with COVID and the Browns shocked the Steelers in that playoff.

Are you totally in on the way things played out?

Are you a little bit...

In Stefanski's case, obviously, because then he's coaching the next week in the divisional playoffs.

But if you're the special teams coach, are you like,

should have used that play when I got back?

Yes.

God damn it.

I don't know.

We don't even know why the guy missed the game, so maybe we should just move on.

All right, we will move on to a break.

And when we get back, we're going to close out the week 12 conversation.

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All right, we're back.

Sess Dog AFC Showdown in Miami.

Showdown feels strong, but go ahead anyway.

At 9.30 a.m.

Pacific, Mark goes on British television to sing love songs about Drake May.

By 11.30 a.m.

Pacific time, Mark is watching Drake May being sliced in half by Miami's Chop Robinson and friends, while the Patriots defense, apparently kidnapped by Syrian land pirates, no shows against a lights-out Tua, who hits 247 yards passing by halftime.

Laser beams down the seam.

Jalen Waddle going nuclear.

Jonu Smith punking a gaggle of lost New England rubes.

30-plus minutes of garbage time.

This is a reminder of the core power this offense possesses.

Too little, too late?

I don't think so anymore.

Dolphins 34, New England 15.

I thought you were saying it was a reminder that we should never predict things strongly because they never seem to work out for us.

I mean, that was just the most cliche thing.

And, you know, you're telling an international audience about this player, and then he gets his butt kicked.

And it wasn't his fault.

Like, he's a good player.

I still believe him, but this was a massacre.

Yeah.

I thought this game would be one-sided, and it played out that way because it just seemed like it's set up well where the Dolphins had been making tangible progress since Tua had gotten back, and it was time to have this breakout game.

And New England is certainly, while they've become more watchable

with Drake May at quarterback, they're still a bad defense.

And

they have a lot to do to become a relevant team again.

So to Miami's credit, they're hanging around.

Like I said, Denver has really positioned itself well.

And you also have, obviously, the Chargers, the wild card is pretty competitive in the AFC right now.

But they have started to stack wins here.

And they should be taken seriously as a contender for sure.

I just thought today watching, like, New England's been somewhat competitive on defense in some of these games.

There are no shining litmus tests, but the way that Tua absolutely destroyed them right over the middle of the field with deep passing.

And we've seen it before, but I think also Jalen Waddell was his career game.

And

if you get Tyreek Halen Waddell healthy down the stretch,

I wonder if this team might have a little bit more of a chip on its shoulder when it comes to the winter.

And we did have Mike McDaniel comment on, he was asked, like, oh, now it's turning to winter.

Are you guys basically fraudulent?

And he didn't love this, but we can hear what he said.

We've been waiting 11 months, 12 months, whatever it is, to see you in a cold weather game again.

You've gotten back in the mix.

You won the three games you had to.

What's next for the Miami Dolphins this week?

Well, you're just going to let me really lean into this victory for a while, huh?

You know,

I'm eager for those moments.

You know, I think

you're just like you're eager

to settle the score,

if you believe that you're not just a front-running team,

you have to win when there's some adversity going on.

All right.

He's always funny.

But McDaniel is obviously annoyed by that.

But the only way to shake the narrative, Sess Doug, right, is

you got to do it.

So how about this?

You're on a three-game winning streak.

You got yourself back in the mix at five and six.

Lambeau Field calling.

That's on Thanksgiving.

Lambo Fields calling.

Thanksgiving night.

Yep.

You want to slay some narratives, and I'm sure it's super annoying.

And it's not just him, everyone on that team being told, oh, we can't play when it's less than 67 degrees.

All right.

Here's an opportunity against a Green Bay team that has a very good record, but I don't think is

in the eyes of many, like some unstoppable team.

No, it sets up perfectly.

Island game, evening.

Most of America is semi-hammered.

You also have to go to Cleveland late in the season, and you have to go to the Jets.

Now, that doesn't concern me so much.

At this point, we'll see what that team is.

They'll still be cold, though.

And it's like, that's the question.

Can they function as an offense?

Yeah.

I think it's a fair question and a pressing question about what the Dolphins have been.

So

it wasn't the right time maybe to ask McDaniel that, but I like when they ask questions like that.

All right, Mark.

here is the other question because we talked about on Thursday.

Can you talk about the New England Patriots and not mention Drake May?

Go.

Well, they were a disaster today.

It was concerning for me to, I won't mention the quarterback's name, but Chop Robinson, who is a very interesting defender for the Dolphins, absolutely dominated their offensive line.

And that for me was just the concern about, I think, Connor, we talked about, like, you put in a rookie, like, do you take away his confidence?

And I don't think that's true at all.

But it's in general, globally, a very incomplete team.

And I don't think that the head coach right now is providing a lot of

in terms of like intellectual advantage on the field or situational advantage.

They seem to be just getting by.

And when you play a team with a lot of speed like they did today, they had no answer for it.

Nine penalties in the first half for the Patriots, six of which were pre-snap penalties, four false starts, one offensive offside, offensive offside, one defensive neutral zone infraction.

Yeah, that you can't win.

When you have the margin of error is so slim, Connor, with the Patriots that they need to be clean.

And that's my question.

Like, when we talk about Hot C, we'll talk about Gerard Mayo, like, whether organizationally, when they sit down after the season, it's like, do we have the right guy to build around this quarterback the right way?

It's a great question.

And I think Gerard has probably weathered some of the more difficult things.

He's made a lot of the mistakes that first-time head coaches make.

And I don't think you don't give him a second year.

I mean, you know, I think you have your offensive coordinator of the future, which is important.

And at this point, it's just, you know, how is he going to finish the season?

And, you know, a couple of these blowouts start adding up, though.

And that's not going to look good.

All right.

One more game before Sunday night football.

We head to the Meadowlands where the Giants and Tommy Gutlitz went to work against the Bucs.

How'd that go, Connor?

When you lose number nine, 32-7, this time with DeVito.

With DeVito.

When you're called soft as f, probably down on your luck with DeVito.

Bucky Irvin scores, White adds one more sacks that total four.

Then

there's Mayfield

throwing up Italian hands as he looks into the stands ain't he looking grand poor Giovito

I was writing this while you were texting like please be more serious with your recaps

I'm so sorry

I

well the Giants are an unserious team Connor this is the perfect recap and just a gorgeous singing voice.

Thank you.

You really do.

I can actually say real things about this game if we want.

Well, it was just like, what a dumpster fire.

We'll get to Tampa, but like, I think this is going to be the Jets fan of me coming out.

But, like, I feel like sometimes the Giants skate and the Jets are offering plenty of cover in New York because they are an absolute dumpster fire.

But the Giants are now giving them a run for their money.

There is some major dysfunction in that building, and you do not have to read between lines anymore.

In fact, we have some sound here that the decision to bench Danny Dimes, then to cut him, then to put in the people's Italian champion, the Italian stallion in a quarterback over the actual backup, all that stuff.

These are smart fans.

They're sniffing it out, and it smells like dog poop.

Here is, let's start with Malik Neighbors.

And I think lyrically he was quoted in Connor's Diddy.

Here's Neighbors after the game.

What words today would you use to describe this loss?

Self as f.

Did you expect the quarterback change to be to provide more of a spark to?

I mean obviously it ain't the quarterback.

Same outcome when we had a DJ a quarterback.

I mean take a look.

Take a look.

It ain't the quarterback.

And then Brian Burns, the

high-paid defensive end brought into the offseason.

He was also asked to share his thoughts.

What do you make out of coming off your bye week and being down 30 to nothing at home?

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

Go ahead, Connor.

It's just.

You know what that is, though?

That is also a clinic in, that was Jordan Renan, who covers the team for ESPN.

We used to work together.

And then I think it was Ryan Dunleavy of the Post who asked the first question to neighbors.

That is a clinic in locker room question asking, which I think,

you know, because what do you make of being down 30 to nothing at halftime can't not elicit a good answer.

And then he said ass, which is just,

oh, God, anytime you get a guy to say ass, it's just

never ask a yes or no question, right, Connor?

And also, if you could T-Man up to say ass, you have done your job at journalism school.

Yeah.

So here, here are kind of the interesting things is Baker Mayfield had 200 passing yards, 200 plus passing yards at half.

He hit hit 11 different wide receivers in this game.

Tampa Bay started with like a 14 play, eight and a half minute drive and just really kind of took the Giants out.

But there are three things that absolutely sunk the Giants.

So the first one, they try a fourth and short from their own 37 after a big Tyler Newbin pass breakup.

So you're sensing the momentum shifting a little bit.

But Dable runs a very similar play to one he ran on a fourth down against Seattle a couple of weeks ago, but just to a different wide receiver to Wandell Robinson.

It gets stuffed.

Then later on in that, the Buccaneers get the ball back.

They drive.

Sean Tucker fumbles the ball at the one-yard line.

And I sent you guys the video of this.

It's just absolutely insane.

The ball is just sitting on the ground.

Oh, my God.

He fumbles, and the ball is just on the ground for like four

actual seconds of game time.

It was like it was between Brian Burns's feet, and nobody picked it up.

And then, like, the Buccaneers just hopped on it and then scored a touchdown.

Then after that, after the half, DeVito got going a little bit, looked good.

They drove down the field, and then they get inside.

They picked up their first first-down conversion of the game, and it was inside the three-yard line.

Then Brian Dable runs wildcat with Tyrone Tracy, who fumbled in that huge Bengals game, and he fumbled

right in front of the goal line.

And then from there, it was, you know, just

a matter of time.

And again, tying back to growing up in that region, being jealous,

Bill Parcells, can you even imagine what Bill Parcells would do if his defense at the goal line, there's a ball kicking on the ground and no one's looking down and no one's alert enough or plugged in enough or passionate enough about what they're doing on the field to have the awareness to get down on the ball and you let the quarterback dive in, the quarterback should be punished for even trying to go near that ball and to let Baker dive on it.

I just thought it it was so symbolic.

And

I think, Mark,

all three of us grew up in that area.

There was something, I think, about the way the Giants have handled this that is just a bad look.

And it's like right down to this DeVito thing where it's...

clear the decision was made.

It's either whether it was partially out of tanking or partially out of we don't want that building to be totally empty for the last month of the season.

But it's not a series that's unserious football decisions being made by an organization that has been known to be better than that, but certainly hasn't been for a decade.

So

it's a very dark era for Giants football and a hell of a year for New York football in general.

A terrible year for New York football.

I mean, I go back to like the summer hard knocks and what the Giants wanted to be and what they thought they were going to be.

And this is one of the more on-the-nose, it's just an on-the-nose tank job.

And I just, I don't, I wonder where the owner who has been peeved and irritated for reasons just beyond Saquon Barkley, where are they with this?

Like, it feels kind of like a fireable offense how this whole thing was managed.

And I, and I, like, I'm in this world of, like, I like Dayball, but

that's not a good idea.

Well, I don't think we're good in that because we're going to do our hot butt talk.

But yeah,

this feels like it's reaching untenable status.

Like, you've got to do that.

Anything else on this game?

Yeah, certainly.

Certainly.

I think that's my fear.

Like, when you took Malik Neighbors and there were a couple of options there at wide receiver, the thing that pushed him over the edge was that kind of alpha, that independence, that mean streak that maybe Roma Dunze didn't have that the Giants thought.

But the problem is, if you get yourself down in this rabbit hole, like Malik Neighbors is not the kind of guy that's going to be like, oh, everything's going to be fine.

He's going to be like, no, this sucks, you know?

And so you're dealing with that, like the monumental shift now of it does appear that you have lost the locker room.

And that's the big thing right there.

Let me see that Baker, Tommy Cutlett celebration.

Oh, it was so good.

Can we just talk about that for one second?

Like, I know we've already spent way too much time on this game, but how funny that was.

Oh, my God.

It's such an exaggerated version.

I know.

He looked like a European soccer referee.

Like, he was just like, oh, my God.

It was that was my favorite part of the game.

Did you see what happened after when he was at the the Baker Mayfield press conference?

There was a reporter that kept kind of trigger him and asked him why he chose to do that.

Like, was it planned?

And it kind of sort of said, no, it wasn't planned.

Like, you know, I just,

yeah, let's take a look because I thought I love this.

Finished that off with a kind of a whirling derby leap there in the end zone.

And then

I guess it was the DeVito celebration.

Tribute.

Tribute to Tommy.

Yeah.

He's a good dude.

That's why.

Yeah, who came up with that?

Oh, I have no idea.

I just see him do it.

No, but

whose idea was it for you to do that?

And when did you know you were going to do it?

You know, most of the times I don't know what I'm going to do.

So

there's spontaneous stuff.

That was just spontaneous?

That was not planned.

I mean, even your teammates got into it, too.

Yeah, you know.

New York fans love Tommy here and give him something they like.

Are you Italian by any chance or no?

I haven't done a 23andMe, but I don't know.

Are you Italian?

Did you guys love it?

He's really on the beat there.

I love that guy.

guy.

Mayfield is English, by the way.

I was wondering about that.

What is that?

All right.

Not that anyone

knows that.

And by the way, Tampa, for all the highs and lows of their campaign, that ended a

four-game losing streak.

And now they are a game out in the NFC South.

With a schedule that is ass, to quote Brian Burns.

Positive ass or negative ass.

Positive.

Well, good ass for them.

Yeah.

Good ass, nice ass.

Positive ass.

Schedule of a great ass.

You got a great ass.

All right.

To Sunday night football.

Oh,

Sunday night.

Oh,

Saquon Barkley.

I mean,

holy shit.

26 carries, 255 yards, and two touchdowns on the ground.

In addition to four for 47, just for fun receiving, it's 302 total yards for the dynamo running back of the Philadelphia Eagles, who roll to a 37-20 win at SoFi Stadium, a SoFi stadium filled with Eagles fans who were there to celebrate.

on holiday week and man with barkley leading the way it's become a party for the eagles who have won seven straight.

They are 9-2, running away at the NFC East.

And, Mark, I am not afraid to say it.

I have been slow to coronate the Eagles as a superpower.

They started to win me over last week with how they throttled Washington.

But it was this game, even though we know the Rams are an imperfect machine.

I know that.

But it's the way they handled their business.

They are playing tremendous football on both sides of the ball with Barkley now firmly in the MVP conversation leading the way.

It's everywhere you look.

And it was a year ago at this time that the Eagles, in a similar position record-wise, started to melt down and fracture and create all these questions about what the organization meant from the coach on down, specifically the coach.

And it's almost like Saquon Barkley, and it's not just him, but he's the symbol of like all those questions that you rightfully had at the start of this season a month ago.

Saquon Barkley alone has kind of washed all that away, and they are a dominant team.

And I remember when they came out to Los Angeles and Carson Wentz was lost, and that was a dominant team.

But the similar aspect to that team in this, but more with this, is that they get a lead and they stomp you, and both sides of the line create total havoc.

And like the Rams are a solid team.

We've seen it from week to week.

They have some fight.

They're okay.

But like, this was total domination.

And when I watch a team kick into this gear, it's very concerning for the rest of the league.

Because as much as this was, I think, a night where it leaves you with a lot of questions about what the Rams are this season, it left me with a lot of answers about what the Eagles are.

It's that simple.

And I think it's good to mention the defense, too, because the defense has given up so many fewer big plays than a year ago.

And that was a big problem last year.

And so it's almost like the whole operation is rounding into gear.

And can they finish this season in a complete opposite way to last year?

Yes, I think they can.

It's so funny to see Sean McVay playing Vic Fangio anytime he does because when he first got into the NFL and he started getting hot as like this offensive wonder kind, when he played Vic Fangio for the first time, he was like, okay.

The next time that I hire a defensive coordinator, he has to know that system because I hate playing against it so much.

And even after all this time studying it and hiring Brandon staley who at the time was like the closest thing to a fan geo disciple still seeing it bothers him it flummoxes him and it takes this offense and it kind of just it just wrings it out like slowly like a towel you know and that's so cool to watch it just like just placing a cap on it just slightly limiting your playmakers and then at the last second just dialing up just a little bit of pressure i mean like you know he'll go into these games seven percent eight percent nine percent blitzes and then when he does it just always seems to hit like he's just, this is a fine wine season for him right now.

Yeah.

And their secondary, which was at the heart of their collapse last year.

You know, I'm not breaking news here because we know that they hit on both their draft picks there with Quinyon Mitchell, who nobody wants to throw near Quinyon Mitchell.

And then you have Cooper Dijon, who's Cooper DeGine, who's been manning the slot, and, you know, he makes plays every week that jump out at you, fortifying that with C.J.

Gardner Johnson, you know, throwing down the hammer from his position.

It's just they are front to back with all those premium draft picks in the front four.

Like they are a team that is playing at a high level.

It's almost now the question now with the Eagles is like, yeah, because I think they were 10-2, actually, Mark, before they began their descent into hell last season.

The question is, you know, don't peak too soon.

Are you able to sustain this and continue this on?

Now, they certainly have the personnel to do it, and so far they've had, for the most part, good health, which is going to have to continue.

But yeah, Barkley is, you know, the biggest difference, though.

And that's saying something because there's a lot of guys that have come into this team with Howie Roseman and been

bringing them in and been difference makers.

But what's that stat,

Justin, we have here?

That's Shield Capadia.

In the last 10 years, there have been two instances of running back having five or more 50-plus-yard runs in a season.

Saquon Barkley in 2018, that was his, I believe, believe, rookie year with the Giants, and now Saquon Barkley in 2024.

Barkley already has more 50-plus yard runs than any player had last season.

This is his 11th game.

He is in comfortable

distance to 2,000 yards rushing, Connor.

He is

playing the game at such a high level.

And I think there's no one that could have predicted nobody.

And I want to ask you guys, the former Giants beat reporter, what they must be thinking in Jersey right now, but like that he could be this good.

We knew he was a good fit and we knew what he was doing with the Giants.

He could be better in Philadelphia with better blocking, but to be this good, this is Hall of Fame level good and it's a big difference and a major driving force behind 9-2.

And I think that's the frustration.

And I think, you know, John Maron not wanting to let him go, but at the same time, being sort of a prisoner of his own habits, really, it was the double-edged sword.

You limited Saquon Barkley's potential while you had him based on the offensive coaches that you kept hiring.

I mean, Jason Garrett was his offensive coordinator for a little while.

I mean, that's insane that that happened.

Pat Shermer, you know, and so you were kind of squeezing him and limiting him with the Giants, but you knew what he was capable of.

And so I think that was the biggest pain for him to let him go.

I think it was a sound decision financially.

Saquon Barkley was not going to have this season with this year's Giants team.

I mean,

it wouldn't even be even close, right?

And so you know in the back of your mind, you're doing something that's still responsible and reasonable, but you also know that he's going to go somewhere and absolutely whip ass.

And I think that was the hard thing for him to swallow.

Well, and he went to the very worst of all 32 teams.

I mean, it's which they should have also known.

Like, I think, you know, like

you should have had a finger on the pulse.

You should have known that, you know, I mean, he was, you know, you do know that, right?

He's from that area of the country, like the Allentown Whitehall area.

His high school beat my high school in the state playoffs on a fake field goal.

No big deal.

But,

yeah, it was like a 50-yard fake field goal, which we were trying to block, like a real field goal.

Like a kid could have kicked that, you know?

Yeah, no, no way that that was an obvious fake situation.

Right.

Anyway, I didn't play.

Sorry about that.

I sucked at football.

But

so the,

but, you know, you're from that area.

So if you're in your family conscious, like you're in that part, you're in that head space, right?

Like, where else is he going to go?

Of course, he's going to go.

Like, you know, that's the place you go.

So, I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And on the Rams side of things,

they were just outclassed in this game.

And I was a little surprised, yeah, that it was this easy for the Eagles.

And it was the 72-yard run by Barkley that both gave him the team record for rushing yards in game and also turned this game into a laugher.

But in reality, Mark, this was a case of a Rams team that just was not able to be competitive on either side of the ball.

Matthew Stafford, really, like we were talking about, struggled dealing with the Fong Geo defense here and obviously the Rams defense, which obviously has a lot of young, talented players, were blown off the ball in this game, all game.

Yeah, I know they've gotten a little healthier along the line, but it didn't show tonight.

They started really slow, and we've talked about this all season, but they now have a negative 53-point differential in the first quarter.

And that's the problem when you play the Eagles.

If If you're not going to get out to a fast start and you get taken out of your game plan and they start doing what they do and drive a hammer through your skull, this is not a team that's able to come back.

And also,

Matthew Stafford needs to be kept safe.

And that was not the case tonight.

He took four sacks.

And it's like

this is the kind of game, to your point, about Fangio versus McVay.

It's like,

it just seemed like what was McVay had no answers this evening.

And it could be a,

they don't have the personnel the Eagles do.

And it's just one of these games where it's like the Eagles just look like a better team in every possible way.

And this is what it is.

It's a hammering.

And you're right.

Don't peek too soon.

But I don't get that concern with them save for the fact that that's exactly what happened a year ago.

Different people just a hammering, but like a display of depth.

Like before the season, I did every team's most underrated player.

Milton Williams is my guy for the Eagles.

And the way that he's been able to figure out how to play off of Jalen Carter and just like all that stuff.

I mean, these are your fourth, fifth, sixth guys that are on the roster at a certain position.

And, you know, he had two tackles for a loss, two sacks tonight, massive part of the success of that game.

And it's just, you know, this is that part of the season where I know Dan, you loved it.

Chris Collinsworth did a real, you know, real savory sort of whip-topping segment on Howie Roseman and what of a good job he's done at pulling all the levers here.

But the truth is, like, we're starting to see the depth, that depth layer.

And

man, it's, it's good.

A couple points, then we'll get out of here.

First of all, you know, we all know, well, we live here, or

Mark Justin, and I, like, there's a lot of Philadelphia transplants in LA.

And on top of people, it's the holiday weekend, so people are going to fly to LA, right?

I just wonder, like, we're so used to SoFi being filled up with the opposing fan when there's 60,000 Eagles fans at this game today, or 50,000, whatever it was.

Does Stan Cronkie not care?

Does the NFL care?

Does anyone care care how the way this is set up?

Like, this is not normal, but it's almost becoming normal.

And I just wonder, like, I don't know, Connor, maybe that could be a good SI story.

Like, what does it mean?

Like, what does it matter?

Does it matter?

It seems strange to me.

You've got a tough town to build a fan base in, even though you win a Super Bowl.

But I think it's like you've got everything you just mentioned that I would care about, and then you've got the money on the other side, which I think those other people got.

Also, why is it a tough town to build a fan base in?

Like, they have

massive fan bases in Los Angeles with the Dodgers and the Lakers, obviously, in USC.

It's not like you can't build a fan base here.

It's just.

Well, you can, and they do have fans.

But does it feel the same to you as

the Pittsburghs?

The Detroits.

No, there were 60,000 fans for the opposing team at the stadium today.

So

don't call yourselves fans if you're going to sell your tickets

to anyone else.

Because you've got 55 other things to do in L.A.

Also weird to me,

during the pregame show, which is that pregame show, my God, on NBC, wild.

But

Rodney Harrison,

they're showing the different celebrities because all the Philly fans are out.

And they show

Bradley Cooper, super world famous actor, has been in so many big-time movies,

award-winning movies.

And Rodney Harrison goes, I know Bradley Cooper, limitless.

It's like Bradley Cooper's seventh most popular movie, tenth most popular movie.

I got a kick out of that.

And then

the last thing I wanted to share was Rob Lowe.

Speaking of fans, they did a whole segment on how Rob Lowe, remember Rob Lowe from,

yeah,

no, show me the Rob Lowe Lowe that became an NFL icon when he showed up at a game wearing an NFL hat.

I briefly sported this hat when I was on a break from the Jets earlier this season.

And now show us the pregame segment on NBC today

where Rob Lowe wearing an ill-fitting jersey,

Rams jersey, tells us that he fell in love with the Rams in 1978 when he saw Heaven Can Wait.

Does anybody, was this not passing the sniff test for anybody else?

Yeah, I just don't buy a word of it.

This feels like very pre-election when you're just sitting there and you're like, oh, Bad Bunny is going to vote for someone.

It's like, you know,

what does it matter?

Like, who gives a shit about this?

You know?

I love that.

I love the saga of Rob Lowe as an NFL fan, who he's connected to, how he got there, whose jersey that was, how quickly he took it off after the shoot was over.

All right.

Let's talk a little schedule this week.

And thank you if you made it this far.

It is Thanksgiving week, and I will throw to the fine producer Justin Graver to lay out what's ahead.

All right.

Tomorrow, Monday, depending on when you're listening to this, tomorrow or Monday, we're going to do a little experiment.

We're going to have some fun.

We are going to live stream.

We're going to live stream the Monday night recap on YouTube.

So if you are an audio listener, the podcast will be available as usual, normal time.

However, if you want it sooner, maybe check us out on youtube youtube.com slash at heed the call pod where we will live stream our recap there tuesday

tuesday we will be doing our thanksgiving day preview uh podcast and along with a little hot butts update that's coming tuesday wednesday around the same time that the preview the week 12, 11, whatever, the week 13 preview is going to come out on Wednesday instead of Thursday because Thursday is Thanksgiving.

So it's coming out a a day early.

Thursday night, we got the Thursday night, Thanksgiving Day.

We're going to recap all three Thanksgiving Day games on Thursday night.

And then on Friday, Patreon show, Sunday, back to the flagship recap, which, if everything goes well this week, will also be a live stream experience.

We'll see.

Or people might hate it.

We'll see.

You know, yeah.

So we're going to, yeah, we're experimenting with some things as our first season here with Heed the Call rolls on.

But thank you for everybody.

Thank you to everybody for the support.

And we ain't slowing down.

There are no reverse gears in this tank.

Mark, last word to you.

I think that the idea of a live show creates all sorts of personal possibilities.

I'm still pondering

what's going to happen here, good or bad, positive or negative.

I would say that you could lose sleep over it, but that would be, you can't lose something that you don't possess.

Well, that's true.

I do sleep.

It's just,

I'd call it, I'd label it as sporadic.

I'm picturing you staring at that ceiling thinking about the live show.

No, I'm legit excited for it because this is a new territory.

We've kind of done this before.

But

this is another scenario.

It's the end of the show.

It's late, and it's like, I should have stopped this comment about 14 minutes ago.

Well, I like to lie a lot too.

Thank you very much, Mark.

Thank you, Connor.

Thank you, Justin.

And we will see you Monday night.

Till then, eat the call.

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