NFL Week 6 Recap!!

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Coming up next, we recap every game in week six.

The Ravens are unstoppable.

The Bucks are throwing up a 50 burger, and Jerry Jones has the birthday from hell.

Up next, the flagship show.

Stay right here.

The Heat the Call podcast

Does it actually wait all day for Sunday night?

No.

There's plenty of stuff to do.

Plenty of games to watch.

That's what this whole show is about.

Welcome to the flagship program, Heath the Call, with Dan Hansis and Mark Sessler.

Week six, Sunday in the books.

And now, yes, we will dig into it.

And Mark, precious Sunday night football for the corporate gods who need their little tummies padded.

Yes, we're going to get to that too.

Well, they, you know, they're very entitled.

Let's start there.

They, they act, they, they've, they've actually come out with a statement suggesting that everyone in our country is just sitting around, like, what am I, lying on a haystack all day, waiting for Sunday night football it's like

getting our asses kicked there's like 14 games happening at the same time so don't hit me with that nonsense when it's already happening while we're doing our show it's already happening everything that we need to happen is happening we're in control No, it's going to be a good show.

Cecil's fired out of a cannon.

Connor Orr, I know you're going to bring it.

You've been filing pieces for SI.com.

You've been studying.

You're ready for this.

You're wearing your Irish soccer jersey.

You're pumped.

Let's go.

Like, let's do this, guys.

Come on.

Was it last Sunday's show where I saw a YouTube comment you were wearing an orange soccer kit, and one of the commenters said, Connor looks like Nails, who's like one of the more forgotten heel wrestlers of the early 90s.

And I couldn't disagree, but today you look like a fine lad from the Emerald Isle.

Not only nails, and I got that I looked like I was wearing a correctional facility jumpsuit, but someone actually not only got the what jersey it was, but what World Cup it was from.

I ordered it from like some weird Taiwanese website in college.

And yes, for those, you know, to tie it all together, Nails was an escaped convict.

That was his shtick.

And for whatever reason, and this always blows the mind of my buddy Bob, I still remember what his prison jumpsuit number was, 902714.

I don't know why it's there, that knowledge.

Why do you know that?

There's so much more important things that I forget on a daily basis, but I know that Nails'

correctional number was 902-714.

All right, let's, without further ado, get into the action because we had a full slate, four teams on bye, but still much to talk about.

And the game where we must start because we got to start.

The showdown between

the

high,

flying, fast, rising Washington Commanders and their neighbors, the mighty Ravens.

Let's get to it.

Week six starts down.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

And QZUSR, they call it the Battle of the Beltway.

But this wasn't quite the back and forth bayonet warfare the final score may have led you to believe.

In fact, not since Beverly Sufton,

the anti-hero of the John Waters cult classic serial mom, has Baltimore witnessed the enemy killed in such a cheery, breezy, effortless manner.

Are those pussy willows?

You don't wear white shoes after Labor Day, and you don't get to come to M ⁇ T Bank Stadium these days and walk out alive.

Buckle up, Scotty.

Ravens 30, Commanders 23.

And...

There it is.

I mean, listen.

The final score.

It's a one-score game when the Ravens take take over with 248 to play in the fourth quarter.

But honestly, if you watch this game, it felt like it was 50 to 23.

That's how comfortable it felt for Baltimore, which is saying something given this team's recent history, not even recent, just ongoing history in the John Harbaugh-era struggles to close out game and blowing leads.

But not here.

There wasn't any of that anxiety in the stadium.

You could feel that even when you're watching from home.

And it's because their offense is just in such a groove right now.

And the Commanders are going to be okay.

And we'll talk about the commanders.

The commanders are going to continue to be a fun team to watch.

But this was a measuring stick game, and it just showed the things that the commanders are not good at, which is the side of the ball where Jaden Daniels doesn't play, is going to hold them back when they play the cream of the crop teams.

But I think they could beat pretty much anybody else.

So the Ravens here get another big game from Lamar Jackson, who went over 300 yards passing in back-to-back games for only a second time in his career, which actually really surprised me.

But he shredded the Washington defense.

Their secondary really struggled.

And Derrick Henry, another huge game for Henry.

And this is a move that made so much sense at the time when it happened.

Mark Sessler, when Henry signed with the Ravens, but it's even been better than they could have imagined because he is now the second player in NFL history to total over 600 yards rushing and eight-plus touchdowns in his first six games with a new team, joining Eric Dickerson with 83 Rams.

He went over 132 yards and two touchdowns touchdowns in this game, and the Ravens could not be slowed down.

It's kind of great when you see, because I think free agencies obviously

exploded to the point where teams go crazy in the spring, and so much of it doesn't work out.

And we kind of know it won't, but we talk it up.

But when it does work, like it's working right here with Henry and the Ravens, and the fact that also like Todd Munkin and the Ravens are working, like this, this is another week that proves to us that the Todd Munkin offense is here to fly.

And we got Mark Andrews back involved today.

We got Zay Flowers with a massive game.

You've got Derrick Henry puncturing a Washington defense that had no idea what to do with him.

And you get another week of Lamar Jackson playing the way that he is.

It's just, it's more proof positive that this is the AFC's

biggest threat to the to the Chiefs and more dynamic than the Chiefs in many ways on offense.

More dynamic.

So it's like, I want to see them play again, and they will.

But this is

this, this was a, it wasn't a trap game because I think we know the commanders are imperfect on defense, but it's just like you went out and did your job.

And that to me is

that's a big development for the Ravens to be consistent, to dominate, to go out and hammer people.

And Connor, that's now, that's 484 yards in this game.

The Ravens averaged 7.6 yards per play.

And yes, they lost their first two games of the year and now have won four straight.

Unless we forget, forget, week one, the opening Thursday game, ended with, what was it, Isaiah Likely's back heel or whatever it was.

They nearly stole that game.

In a lot of ways, this team feels, and I know it ended poorly last January, but last year in the regular seasons and the Ravens were one of the best teams we've seen in recent memory.

This team is starting to look like they have that type of ceiling again.

What sold it for me was that first Derrick Henry touchdown, and you watch the way that they lined up, and you get Patrick Ricard, and he's coming off, and you just love this idea of he's doing the legal version of the cheat motion, and you just love this idea of like 9,000 pounds of humanity coming towards you and destroying you.

But if you watch that touchdown again, the key block on that play was thrown by Zay Flowers, like the smallest guy on the field.

And just to a man, one through 11, everybody is so dialed in and bought into an offense that doesn't always necessarily feature their playmakers.

And I think that's when you know you have a good thing going on when you got Zay Flowers throwing critical blocks.

Yeah, Zay Flowers has become

everything

that the Ravens could have hoped for in this game.

This was his stat line at halftime on Sunday.

Nine targets, nine catches, 132 yards, an average of 14.7 yards per catch.

Like he's, he was just, everything he was doing was working.

He was finding wide open pockets.

The guy has a mind-meld now with Lamar Jackson.

And it was, you know, for years, Mark, we talked about Baltimore's inability to hit on a wide receiver in the draft.

And they tried and they tried.

And it was something they struggled with.

Flowers is the real deal.

And I'm glad you brought up Mark Andrews because

I know he's had a lot of injuries.

And I know his stat line doesn't like explode at you at this game.

But if they could find a way to make him a part of the offense in an organic way, that's going to take them from,

you know,

nearly impossible to deal with to potentially like an unstoppable juggernaut.

That's, again, why I keep on saying ceiling.

There is no ceiling.

There's a chance for this offense to be the best in the league.

So the fact that it came at the expense of the commanders who were getting all the pub, I'm sure it was

a really nice feeling in that locker room to be able to remind everybody that, yeah, not only are we the best team in this region, we are the best offense despite what everybody else is saying.

You know, I went to college in Washington, D.C., and I took the,

in the summer when I stayed there once,

they had a had a train called the Mark Train, M-A-R-C.

I don't know why they ever named it that, but I would go down to Ravens or Orioles games because it was the Cal Ripken streak year.

And the one thing you picked up was that these cities don't like each other in the way that a sports team like rivalry forms.

And so it matters a lot on that front.

I think this was for the Ravens.

I just look at them, and there's five straight scoring drives of eight-plus plays.

And that kind of thing is what I love.

Long drives where you're kind of bleeding Dan Quinn's defense down because it's been a pretty good defense.

It's overachieved compared to what I thought.

And this today was just another step of the Ravens saying, we are the AFC North's best team.

Let's stop that nonsense right now.

You've got to come get us.

And yes, you can be the team getting the headlines all week long, Jaden Daniels and your friends, but here we are.

And

I've been anti-Ravens for, you know,

since the team came out of the womb of the Cleveland Browns.

But I see this team and they play football in a way that I enjoy.

And if you're curious, Jaden Daniels was good.

I mean, he was not the problem.

Daniels went 24 for 35 for 269 yards.

Terry McLaurin, again, went from the orphan boy with the club foot and the cane to Christmas morning, the rich millionaire's house with the roaring fire and all the gifts he could ever desire.

Now he has a true franchise passer.

He has two touchdown catches in this game.

And that's kind of what I meant as we kind of bring this recap to a close is Connor, they're going to be all right.

They're going to be fine.

But this was a little bit of a wake-up call.

If you want to really be a Super Bowl contender, you're going to have to get better on the other side of the ball.

And that's not to say they can't and they have the right coach to do it, but this was a little bit of a temperature check, and it's not Super Bowl white hot for the commanders in reality just yet.

Not Super Bowl white hot, but probably mostly what you want.

Because if you're Dan Quinn, you're thinking, I could fix the defense.

What I can't fix is if Jaden Daniels sees the Ravens for the first time and freaks out

and sees like some sort of weird simulated pressure or anything like that.

And it's the ones that I did see and really kind of go through and kind of count the rushers on the blitzes and stuff like that.

It really looked like he was comfortable, maybe a little less comfortable than normal, but not to the point where you would be concerned about it.

Mm-hmm.

All right, so we move on.

The Ravens say, Hazen, maybe we're not undefeated, but we have a case as the best team in football.

The Jaguars went into the season thinking they could be one of the big boys in the AFC.

That's not how it's turned out.

Let's head to Joliol London.

Sess Dog.

God save the king.

That's what the new lyrics say.

The previous queen, she's been flushed out.

Now it's a king.

We've got Charles Philip Arthur George now.

Been around forever.

We've got Camilla Parker Bowls instead of Diana Spencer, not ideal.

Who is God saving here?

You get the sense Charles is involved in dark magic, very atypical dinners, secret British worlds within worlds.

With no game plan for big slash beefy Cole Komet, multiple touchdowns, doubling in Chicago's long snapper too, Keenan Allen healthy and scoring multiple touchdowns, too.

Camilla Parker Bowles, zero yards, zero scores.

Caleb Willems shines bright.

23 for 29, large plays on the ground, four touchdown throws.

For the first time since 2013, Chicago has scored at least 35 points in back-to-back games.

The offense penetrates.

The Eberflues defense comes into view.

The Bears are evolving before our eyes.

As for the Jaguars, a lot have quit, said Jacksonville's Andre Sisko.

Chicago, 35, Jaguars 16.

Well, let's start right here because we have a lot of overseas listeners.

They might not like that you said the queen was flushed out.

I mean,

she had an incredible life.

She took over.

Her father died suddenly.

She took over at a very young age.

She, you know,

handled the position with grace and dignity for like half a century.

And then, you know, as time does with all of us, it eventually takes us.

So I wouldn't call it, you know, flushed out feels strong sus dog you know I wrote that at around 7 12 in the morning like it's like when you're telling us that you also want a game in London and I love that I'm very happy for you and I'm excited it's happening for everyone but that means it's happening at a time in the on the west coast when Mark would still be asleep or be doing other things also you're taking it out on the

poor old queen yes

you know I and the Bears have taken it out on the Jaguars who are one of the worst teams in football and you know, at this point, Mark, this feels like, well, you know, now you have to ask the question.

Well, Doug, they have another game in London, which has got to be real pleasant coming off a loss like this.

So it'd be very strange to make a change now.

But now Doug Peterson has got to be in the crosshairs of everything.

In fact, you mentioned Cisco said, you know, there's a lot of quit he was seeing out there.

Right.

And then you have Doug Peterson step up to the podium and he has this to say.

There's still, what have we played?

Six games?

So what do we play?

17 game schedule.

So we got a few more games left.

Right.

You know, so nothing,

you know, nobody's going to, nobody's going to feel sorry for us.

Nobody's going to say, okay, you know, but we've got to change.

We, I mean, I say we, it's all of us, coaches, players, everybody, we have got to change right now that culture.

Culture?

In October, Mark?

Now?

Right.

I mean, these are like London's.

little teacher's pets, right?

And they're one in five.

And like, you're, if you do anything well, it should be you go to London and you take care of business.

I don't see a lot of a, much of a plan to the Jaguars right now.

I see parts, and you can kind of feel, like, this is how the Jaguars have always felt to me.

Like, you can see elements and concepts and ideas, but it's not coming together.

They were not terrible today by any stretch, but I thought this game was about Caleb Williams just announcing, like, there is more than one rookie quarterback in the NFC that can do special things.

And I was pretty drawn in and taken away by his performance.

It's like this offense that was under a lot of critique three weeks ago has

evolved and changed in just a number of weeks.

And it was a pretty interesting watch.

I'm happy, Connor, that we're not one of the shows that was piling on the Bears and counting them out when they had a very rough start.

That there was a primetime game

where Caleb Williams got absolutely destroyed.

And yeah, you were a little bit nervous that this could be another Bears quarterback struggling through a rookie season, but now every single game he's getting better.

And in this game, he threw four touchdown passes and he's just in total control of the offense.

And it does have, it just keeps having these very strange tie-ins and vibes to the RG3 and Andrew Luck rookie year, right?

Where it was so obvious that,

at least from the get-go, that one quarterback was starting hotter, but also had a better offense, was a little bit more mobile.

And you kind of are seeing the line graph sort of coming together a little bit.

And it really has been.

I mean, Caleb Williams, you look at throws that he did not make, especially in terms of timing those first two weeks.

He's getting rid of the ball faster and he's way more confident.

And wait until, I mean, this is the crazy part.

Like, wait until he actually gets command of the offense in a year or two, you know, and starts doing a lot of the stuff that can make him more comfortable in real time.

Like, this is, this guy's going to be special.

This is a crazy stat.

How is this possible?

But it is possible.

And it tells tells you so much about the Bears and their inability to ever find a guy.

And now it's starting to feel like they found a guy that he now has nine touchdown passes mark in six games, which is good.

That's the second most ever

by a Bears rookie quarterback.

Ever.

This is a team that is not, you know.

Ever.

They've not, it's crazy.

It's not crazy that

that stat is achieved now versus 30 years ago, ago but like this is not a team that like swung and missed on 15 first-round quarterbacks they just simply renowned yeah they like didn't draft a bunch of these guys though but this is like they had five touchdowns yeah but in recent history mark there's been obviously trubisky and fields like the they have taken some big swings at the position in the last decade and obviously those didn't work out and and now it looks like it finally is happening It is.

He can play.

I think it's like we don't.

We're in a world now where you can find out pretty quickly how you feel about some of these rookies.

Some of them take time, but like when they've got it, they got it.

And they had like five touchdown drives and six marches and looked completely in control.

It just to me that I think the story is like how like Shane Waldron was under fire like a fortnight ago and suddenly the offense is like a point scoring machine that is hard to contain and the weapons now are working.

Like the Cole Komet thing today, like just the fact that these pieces, and you know, you know, Keenan Allen being is healthy again, that helps.

Like, this was not a functioning offense the same way a month ago.

It now seems relatively unstoppable.

And it's like, this division, by the way, is insane.

And the Bears are a real factor

and look like a playoff team.

And we're going to get to the Lions in just a bit.

And, you know, the absolutely devastating situation that occurred

with their best defensive player and how that can change that division potentially.

And you're right.

Like, you have the Vikings on by, undefeated, a Bears team that is clearly on the come up now.

And the Lions, who are at least entering play Sunday, was a popular pick to come out of the NFC and obviously can still be that team, although they're facing a big challenge here.

The Bears,

I think it's really good for football.

I think it's good

and it's good.

I was thinking about that.

You know, you mentioned the RG3, Lucky or Connor.

We don't have enough good quarterbacks in the league.

So when you have a year where the number one and number two overall overall pick come in and they're ballers and they rescue cities that have been waiting forever to have guys that can actually play the position, that's a big boon for everybody ultimately.

So, I mean, maybe not if you're an NFC North fan, that's not, you're not a Bears fan, you're not loving this development.

But the rest of us, this means more good primetime games,

new matchups, differences in

how January looks potentially down the line.

It's all good.

I love it.

Yeah, I don't know if we realized how desperately in need we were of like a regenerative quarterback class and We'll get to more later, but I think we might be like three or four deep here.

Mm-hmm spicy spicy.

All right, let's keep on moving up next.

We head to Big D with Connor Orr

After his team was absolutely obliterated and boat raced out of their own stadium, 47-9, a score of me, by the way, drowned out by chance of Jared Goff.

Jared Goff.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones probably said,

ha ha, well, sometimes when you paw at the hornet's nest and the cider donuts taste more like Junebug Jangler's brand berry pie.

Or whatever, something like that.

Dak Prescott threw two picks, one in the red zone, while the Lions put up 492 yards of total offense and scored on their first nine drives.

But obviously, this win was bittersweet given that star edge rusher and NFL sack leader Aiden Hutchinson clearly, I mean, just a gruesome leg injury and was carted off the field.

Yeah,

this was a really tough moment here for the Lions.

Ah, brutal, man.

And it was an absolute celebration with all those lions.

This game was in hand.

Yeah.

And it's the type of injury, if you're old enough,

you've seen the, you know, whether it's, you know, Joe Theisman or insert gnarly leg injury here.

Fox did not show it more than a couple times, but if you did go back and watch it, clearly the leg broke and flopped over.

It's sickening.

And there was a report that came down shortly before Sunday night football that...

Hutchinson would need emergency surgery staying in Dallas to repair a compound fracture of a bone.

So the bone coming through the skin.

So just obviously devastating.

And you just hope, obviously he's lost for the year,

and you hope his long-term football future is in a good place.

But it's really, I mean, talk about taking the wind out of the sails of a team that is in full flight.

Here's Dan Campbell on the Hutchinson injury.

I hate it for Hutch.

That's tough.

You know, it was tough.

And he's in good hands right now.

He's being taken care of.

He'll stay back here.

And,

you know, obviously he's going to be down for a little while.

And so that's tough, man.

It's hard when you lose somebody like him.

But we'll know a lot more after this.

And obviously wish him the best.

Yeah.

Campbell holding it together pretty well there as an emotional guy.

I wondered if it would be,

he would get, you know, maybe tear up there.

But he obviously this is a very difficult situation.

But Connor, also, this is a team that has been built very well.

Aaron Glenn's a very good DC.

Campbell is obviously a guy that

they work together as a staff.

It's going to be a huge challenge to try to find a recipe on defense without Hutchinson, and it'll be the big plot line around this team now becomes, can they do it?

Yeah.

I'm glad you brought up Aaron Glenn.

So a lot of the conversation around him is could he evolve that defense?

And, you know, just talking to a couple of other coaches who have game planned against him, there is a sense that he really did take a leap schematically this offseason.

And now that he has some guys that they kind of experimented with all preseason in the secondary, they are finding a rhythm.

And I do wonder now, as we approach the trade deadline, you know, there's some guys that you might be able to pluck off.

You're not going to get an Aiden Hutchinson-type guy, but can you get another body as an edge rusher?

There certainly are some guys that you would think are available that can at least.

What do you think of Hassan Reddick?

Detroit Lions.

That comes to mind.

He might fit.

By the way, happy birthday to Jerry Jones.

I'm sure the celebration dinner is going off right now in Arlington.

Yeah,

just to swing back to the Cowboys side here,

obviously they're injury-riddled.

And it's not an excuse, but it's important to point out that you don't have Micah Parsons.

You don't have Demarcus Lawrence.

They're missing pieces really at almost every level.

But it shouldn't be that easy.

And I was just saying

last week that

they had a more promising effort the week prior.

And it's like, maybe Mike Zimmer needs more time, and we should give these DCs time to figure out their scheme with new personnel.

But at the same time,

I don't know how many more of these type of games,

Mark, that the Dallas Cowboys can turn out before ownership is forced to make a move, whether that's Mike McCarthy on his ass or Zimmer is in and out the door in a matter of months.

But it's almost like something has to change because the season is not only slipping away, it's embarrassing what's happening in Dallas.

Well, yeah, so you, you know, this, this, this went out on, on, on X slash Twitter today that if you look at their last four home games and the scores at halftime of those games, and let's start with last postseason.

Packers 27, Cowboys 7.

Now we've got a new defensive coordinator.

Maybe things are fixed.

Saints 35, Cowboys 16.

Halftime, Ravens 21, Cowboys 6.

Today, Lions 27, Cowboys 6.

So, you know, everyone on Monday morning wants to jump on dak prescott and i get that like he's been a he's had a lot of red zone turnovers it's not been perfect him and cee d lamb aren't like connecting the way they want but like look at the deficits you're dealing with and like where how do you work out of that stuff and like they are an incomplete team that now has piled on a bunch of injuries um because of the dallas cowboys we act like they're probably four wins better than they are they have had good regular seasons but this is a this is not a very good football team right now they're just not and it's like and and I don't think it's a Mike, I don't know, firing Mike Zimmer or firing Mike McCarthy, like you can do that.

And sure, and like they're under pressure, but it's like, I don't know how that's going to solve what I see as just a team that really isn't as good as some of these other schematically innovative, evolving squads that are changing and the Cowboys are staying the same.

Jerry Jones needs to come out and actually show us that he does still care.

I mean, because again, like this is his birthday and we're all imagining like, oh, here comes the fire and brimstone.

But do you really think it's like, hey, Jerry Jones, we have like a 90-year-old barrel of scotch back there, and like, we're going to go ski in the Swiss Alps.

Like, do you not want to come because you're sad?

Because the cowboys lost?

No, that guy doesn't care, you know.

And

I don't agree with that.

I don't know.

Everything I know, like following the sport, as long as I follow Pete, deeply care.

I think he cared.

It does make me, it does make me smile.

Total.

I think it's a complete act.

And I think it's been an act for a long time.

And if he actually cared, he would pay to sustain a middle class of the roster.

But instead, he kind of does what Disney World does, right?

You have these main characters that you pay to come see, and you let the rest of it rot while we're all trapped in Epcot Center with $9 hot beers full of fruit flies, you know?

I don't know if that's actually the case, but, you know,

Epcot Center.

Or maybe he just has some, like, fatal flaws in like the organizational model for building a championship team.

Not that it even matters.

Like whether he cares or not, you look at like if their last three seasons before this, 12 and 5, 12 and 5, 12 and 5.

It's not like the team has been bad, but this team looks bad right now.

And that is, I just wonder, you know, he is, he turned 82 today.

And it's like, does Jarrah, my thing is not whether or not Jerry actually cares or not.

I wonder at this state of his life, if he's like

there enough in terms of understanding

how bad things are, or is he living this ivory tower of Jero World at this point where there's not even like that much getting through, and people are afraid to have hard conversations with him?

Like, I wonder what the world is in Dallas and how that could lead to a total off-the-rails type season.

So, there's two things that happened today that I think, regardless of how distant he is from this earth,

he would have seen.

The one is an absolutely beautiful trick play.

So, it was, let me just, so the game was 10 to 3 at one point.

The Cowboys were actually winning this at one point.

They were up 10-3 in the second quarter, and they tossed the ball to David Montgomery, who then flipped the ball to St.

Brown, who then flipped the ball back to Jarrett Goff, who then bombed it to Laporta for a touchdown.

And then later on in the game, they did a hook and ladder to Panay Sewell, and it was called the thick six,

but it was called back because Sewell was an illegal man downfield, but it was almost the most embarrassing touchdown to have ever scored on you.

The Lions were like seriously just finging around for a quarter and a half of this game and just having the time of their lives.

And that's the other part of it that I've really noticed this season is, and like CeeDee Lamb, like he's on my fantasy team.

He's on a lot of people's fantasy teams.

Like last year, like he was eating.

They can't even score in garbage time anymore.

No one's ever open on this offense.

And I tweeted something along those lines, and then you saw like

a lot of people saying that's because they have an archaic scheme and all this.

And maybe it is.

Maybe, obviously, Mike McCarthy is not a young gun at this point in terms of building an offense.

But at the same time, it was working fine like last year, but something has curdled, and they can't even do the easy stuff anymore.

And they can't find a way to get the ball to land consistently, and there's nobody else stepping up, and

it's a mess.

I like what you said, Connor, about the middle class because it's like we're talking about the three or four stars, but if you really look at how the offense specifically is constructed, and that's what

Mike McCarthy is selling us, right?

The offense, like what he's going to do.

Like behind CeeDee Lamb, there's not a lot to like at wide receiver.

And yes, you can have like, you know, Rico Daddle can have a nice day, but in general, like your backfield doesn't scare anyone.

Like, there's just not a lot here.

And like today's offenses, you want to be the offense that like creates enough confusion where you've got four or five guys that make you think about what's happening before every play.

The Cowboys don't do that, and they're not going to do it all year.

And to my point about Jara, I'm not saying he's infirm or anything, or it's like Joe Biden at the first debate or whatever.

It's like, I'm not, well, maybe it's a little Biden.

It's not Biden's first debate.

Not when we, when we, when we read things,

when we read things on Friday, right?

And it's like the headline on ESPN is, Jara Colin,

we're saving Zeke for the end of the season.

I'm like, does anybody, is anyone telling Jerry that Zeke runs the ball like he's 97 years old now?

Correct.

So

Mark brought up the perfect point, and I think he nailed it.

We got to go.

We got to move.

But like, yeah, give me one more thing, and then we'll go.

Okay.

All right.

When you get destroyed like you did by the Packers last year, for example, a lot of teams, when they get blown out by another team, they take that as an opportunity to learn and to tailor their roster towards weaknesses.

The Packers have nine guys that can catch a ball on any given play.

And to Mark's point, Dallas has none of that versatility.

Everyone knows where the ball is going on every play.

It's a problem.

All right.

Let's take a break.

Hi, Jeff.

By the way, one more thing.

Tom Brady, $375 million contract with Fox, and he's just going to be the beat analyst for a last-place team all year.

Like, what kind of allocation of resources is that?

I was just bringing this up, I thought, on our other show, that, like, this is, you know, on our Patreon show, that this is a weird way to use someone.

I mean, if it's, but if it's like a good competitive Cowboys team, I guess it makes sense because everybody's going to want to watch.

But this version of the Cowboys will be a good test.

Also, he got his minority ownership stake approved.

We're just going to have an owner, like Colin Games.

Like, that's all silly.

All right, let's take a break.

This episode of Heed the Call with Dan Hansis and Mark Sessler is brought to you by BetterHelp.

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They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but who has time to cook breakfast?

What decade is this?

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Laughter is an international language and the clown is the prince of laughter.

But where does the gaiety disappear to when the festival is over?

The circus ended.

The carnival closed for the night.

What happens to the droll man in the ridiculous costume?

Usually his only function is to make us laugh.

It is certainly not to disturb the essential curtain of reality.

The only thing on Sunday, hotter than the fully clothed ATNT suburban couple making sexual comments about the titanium exterior of the new iPhone 15 was Green Bay's offense.

That's sexy.

In a 34-13 win, Jordan Love.

Jordan Love threw for four touchdowns.

Nine different Packers receivers had catches in a very athletic-looking Green Bay defense.

Shut down the Cardinals, holding them to just 89 rushing yards.

The big news here, Marvin Harrison Jr.

was removed and entered concussion protocol.

He hit a Packers defender in the thigh and got up and stumbled and was pulled off the field.

You know who else is going to stumble?

Mark Sessler trying to walk through the streets of Hollywood with this clown mask on after his monologue on the Thursday show that those who doubted the Cardinals and got behind the Packers on Sunday were, you know, people in paint with red noses.

But now it's Mark who must do this entirety of the segment as per ordeal in a clown mask.

What's up, Sess Dog?

Well, it feels great.

I don't know if you can hear me behind the mask here.

I kind of like the idea of dressing up to do a show like this because I do feel like a clown.

Like everything I said became complete dust.

And that's not untrue of many things I say about pro football.

So

humbling, it's good to learn humility.

And to be, I'm just a large clown floating around the street.

This is like doing an album-by-album review with the bandmates of Guar.

That's what it's like doing a show with Sestog right now.

Absolutely.

Nice.

Where'd you get that, by the way?

Up the street.

And

so there is like a costume shop up the street.

And there was literally 600 masks in there.

And you would think that like 20% of them would be clown masks.

This was one of only two clown masks available.

Like, it's like,

for some reason, only two clown masks were available.

I'm glad.

I hope you got the receipt so we could file that with Underdog to get your reimbursement.

Yeah, and I knew this was,

and I do have a mask myself.

It's upstairs.

The The boys were using it all weekend for various bits.

But like,

I knew it felt good about this because there was just, there's something about this Cardinals team that I don't trust.

And in this game, Connor, they no-show, essentially.

Take us through the beginning of this game because this is a game where as you're watching other games, you see the ticker.

It keeps exploding.

And you're like, oh, my God, it's one of those games for Arizona.

It was, but it was interesting that when Green Bay got up and they started scoring a lot, there were a few moments where you thought that they were going to sneak back into this game.

I know I texted the group chat right before the half and I was like, not so fast, guys.

Green Bay had some kicking issues.

The Cardinals were able to get back in, get a field goal at the end of the half.

But there was this moment that I pointed to where it was a critical third and one, and they do kind of this like zone read option thing.

And Evan Williams, who's a Packers' fourth-round pick out of Fresno State, just gets into the backfield and he like faces Kyler Murray like almost like a bear bear and squares him up and Kyler Murray's like one of the most athletic players in the league and had nowhere to go and he just dropped him like three yards behind the line of scrimmage and at that moment you're just like wow if you can match them man to man athletically you don't let Kyler Murray get ahead and get ahead of steam early in the game this team's gonna have a hard time and they can't play from behind they really can't

It seems like everything's cooking here.

And Mark,

you must be watching.

You're wondering.

Jordan Love comes back from the knee injury and he's been a little up and down.

But in this game, 22 of 32, 258, four touchdowns.

He had a pick, but it came on a play where the receiver slipped.

So this looked very much like the guy who tore apart the league down the stretch last year, and you're watching it helplessly, staring at that clown mask, knowing that's your future.

Yeah, I don't know how to be taken seriously at this point,

you know, in this specific situation.

Yeah, I think the Cardinals are frustrating because

they go and stick it it to one team and then they go and do what they did today.

It is funny that you're just talking about the Cardinals' struggles right now.

It's also really hot behind this mask.

I would suggest it's about 25 degrees warmer than without the mask.

But you've got to be encouraged if you're a Packers fan to see this specific performance from Love because he was a little bit lower version of himself last couple weeks, I thought.

How about the Romeo Dobbs saga, Connor?

Like, you know, as a team, you're in a good spot when a guy could just go AWOL on the team, return.

He takes his punishment and then returns to the lineup, just catches a couple touchdown passes.

It seems like when this offense is right, it's a little bit easy.

Yeah, and he was surrounded by everybody.

They made a very big display out of doing that with group hugs, which was weird for me because I've gone AWOL at two different jobs, and that was not the response that I had

from either of those places.

They didn't see you having the ceiling of like a Romeo Dobbs type.

It was like, please get back to work or you will be removed from your health insurance.

And how about the Arizona offense, conversely?

Because, yeah, I saw that they got into it a little bit, tried to make a game, but otherwise I saw interceptions and turnovers and sloppy play.

Really, the story here, Dan, was penalties because Arizona went into this game as the least penalized team in the NFL.

13 penalties today for 100 yards.

Anytime time they got going, it was just, it was absolutely gutting.

And for an offense that really thrives on tempo and rhythm, they could not get into the groove here.

Also, oddly, I didn't want to bring this up because I like grass surfaces and I don't like knocking grass surfaces, but people were sliding all over the place in this game.

It was like an ice skating rink out there.

And the first game all year that I've seen coaches wear snow hats.

So I love that.

I love when that happens.

Mark, are you still breathing?

I am.

13 penalties.

That's what clowns would do.

So that all adds up.

You can barely hear Mark.

It's like, yeah, I know, bro.

Tough one out there.

All right, should we let Mark take the mask off now so we can move on?

Please.

Let's see if his face is all flush and shit.

Oof.

Whoa.

That's why I don't go to parties with, you know, the

dress up and do things.

That's a great call.

And there might be younger listeners to the show or, you know, people that are going to parties, Halloween parties, which is one of my favorite times of the year as someone in my 20s in New York.

Great Halloween parties.

But you've got to make sure that costume is functional.

Absolutely.

And breathability is near the top of the list.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, I've tested that one.

I won't be, well, that's, I may never put that on my face ever again as a human.

That's how that may play out.

Save the receipt.

All right, let's move to

an NFC South battle.

The NFC South, kind of dumb, but I mean that in a most affectionate manner.

Actually, the NFC South is a big,

sweet-natured, rambunctious,

relentlessly dim golden retriever.

You take it to play fetch and it just stares at you as the tennis ball that you just f ⁇ ing bought rolls down the hill and into the sewer.

Does it frustrate you?

Sure, but it means well and it just wants to be loved.

Yes, it was a goofy sports game under the roof of the Superdome where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers used a hot start and a furious finish to dust the home Saints 51 to 27.

A 50 Burger Dennis Allen's hot seat has returned to molten lava hot levels pre-week one.

This game was so weird, guys.

It was first, it was 17-0 Bucs.

Then the Saints scored the next 20 points.

And then it was halftime, right?

And then, well,

the Bucs go out and they outscore the Saints 27-0

to get to that final 51-27 tally.

And let's stay weird here.

Here's the Saints by quarter point total.

0,

27,

0, 0.

See, that's the type of scorigami that lights up my Christmas tree.

I mean, that's just, I don't know, there's no way that's ever happened before in professional football.

And so two things that jump out to me.

First of all, you want to know how did Spencer Rattler play his debut, the rookie QB, the fifth-round pick.

There was some good, almost all of it, in the first half, where he made some throws, and especially considering the circumstances that they fell behind early, that Chris Olave goes out of the game

on the second possession, I believe, when he suffers a concussion on a fumble that's run back the other way for a touchdown.

He really did settle in Rattler through the first touchdown pass of his career.

He went 11 of 17 for a buck 40 and a touch in the first half.

But in the second half, and credit to Todd Bowles, who's been very...

hot and cold this season, I feel like, in terms of his defensive schematics, he said, all right, enough of this.

Let's dial it up on this kid and see how he handles it.

And Rattler really could not take the pressure coming his way.

He went 11 of 23 for 103 and two interceptions in the second half.

And that's when the game really got away, obviously, from the Saints.

So, you know, Mark, it's a New Orleans team that is very beat up.

But at the same time, this was a Tampa team that had to leave their home state because of a hurricane and all the drama and distractions around that.

And they just took it to this New Orleans team, especially the defense, which was pretty pitiful in this game.

Well, yeah.

I mean, the defense, and I, you know, we were weeks removed from saying, like, is offense gone or have defenses adjusted?

The Saints gave up 594 yards.

That is wild.

That's wild.

I find that fascinating.

And, like, that is partly the Bucs.

It's partly the Saints team that, you know, you're missing Pete Werner.

You're missing Derek Carr.

You're missing Taysom Hill.

You're down to your third center.

They really are banged up.

It's not like that's making excuses because everyone is at this point, but they are missing key pieces about who they want to be.

On the flip side, because we didn't really talk about like what happens to a team when you've got to kind of mobilize and change lives, like they brought 350 people with them away from Tampa, like so that the players weren't without their families.

Like they didn't just leave.

I was wondering how that was going to play.

350 people and like 30 plus pets.

Like the only thing I think is that either that goes haywire and you go completely off script and you get your ass kicked, or like, you become like a power center and you're like, we're gonna do this together as a team.

And that really is all like that some of this stuff boils down to.

And they went and laid it on the Saints so hardcore.

Like, it's not for me, I'm not trying to be so pro-Baker Mayfield, but I'm looking at this Bucks team and compared to last year, I just started to wonder: like,

last year they were just sort of a semi-vaguely once-in-a-while spicy team that made the wild card.

Like, are they a fringe, like, NFC championship team that could go in the right matchup, get much farther than we realize?

And we're just not seeing them that way because they're stuck in this wonky division where no one's taken seriously.

Like, they are, like, consistently beating people down.

Um,

I'm not there yet.

I think there may be a little better.

And Acona, I want to hear your take because you were shaking your head in agreement.

But, I mean, this is a Baker threw three interceptions in the second quarter alone, so you still have that, you know, variance with him that you have to keep an eye on.

And, you know,

here's the thing, like, this game was a hard game to

make sense of in some levels because I thought the Saints, and yes, they're beat up and all that, but the effort level was not there.

Two plays in particular that really jumped out to me.

The second Chris Godwin touchdown is a

play where Baker kind of looks, I think Godwin's probably maybe his third read, and it's just a dump into the flat to get three or four yards.

And he just runs through about three arm tackles, bounces off a guy, and credit to Godwin, he's a great player, obviously, but he turns a check down pass that should have been a four-yard gain into a 55-yard touchdown.

The Saints' effort level not there on the tackling.

I think the next drive, Bucky Irvin, I mean, come on, Bucky Irvin takes the ball, and he goes from one sideline to the other.

And I counted five missed tackles by the Saints, and it just was such an ugly performance by their defense that I don't want to take away from the Bucs.

But this is like the positive things that come with playing this division, and that's a bunch of trash.

And they're the best of it.

Could you make the argument, though, and

this is kind of the case that I've been trying to make on the Bucs?

We talked about the Cowboys and the complete lack of a middle class.

I think this team has one of the best middle classes in the NFL in terms of the return you're getting from third, fourth, you know, second, third, fourth, fifth round picks.

Bucky Irving is one, you know, Kali Jacansy, you know, all these other guys that are just making these incredible hard-nosed plays, tackles for loss, you know, effort gang tackles.

And do you think that over the course of a game that they are kind of almost to the point where their physicality bullies you into almost giving up or tapping out?

Like I saw that against Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, too.

And really outside of Denver, they haven't laid down in a game yet this season.

Yeah.

I mean, you're right.

You guys are right that they, there's something to this team, but I guess I'm not there in terms of are they a serious contender in the NFC, but they got juice.

They got juice.

Here's Dennis Allen, by the way.

Our tackling was atrocious.

When you don't tackle, you give up explosive plays, and it just kind of snowballed on us.

That's another guy to keep an eye on.

Just,

he's used up all that goodwill from the first two weeks, and they feel like they're right back in a pretty dark place.

And I don't know what Derek Carr's near future is, but they got a lot to improve on, and they got to do it soon all right let's move on

up next we head to the city of brotherly love with the sess dog no mask

you know there's an old dime store novel called the anatomically gifted land pirate it's about a cowboy man who goes from berg to berg solving civic mysteries he uses muscle and brains and the ladies adore him for his kindness and might don't you wait for anyone to pen a a malt shop brag about this year's Cleveland Browns.

While semi-competent today, the Browns hung around with an Eagles team we're all vaguely suspicious of.

This is also true.

The career of Miles Garrett is floating away.

He magically blocks a field goal that is returned for a score and keeps his team alive, not unlike a Lawrence Taylor figure of old.

But this franchise wrestles with meaninglessness.

Morally ponderous, Deshaun Watson starts the second half 11 for 11, but it doesn't feel that way.

Not enough is happening around him.

Not enough is happening within him.

And the Eagles are a different team when A.J.

Brown is back, with Devonta Smith as returns.

Aesthetic issues exist.

There's still a head coach.

Their head coach is still jawing with fans, like a sixth-grade kid who won a whiteball game and decides to taunt like detached Connecticut parents in v-neck sweaters.

I don't know what Siriani's doing here, but somehow it works.

Eagles 20, Browns 16.

Cleveland feels lost as ever before.

And

yeah, I mean, it works for the Eagles when you're playing this version of the Browns, who are now one and five.

And after the game, again,

and there was a stat that was floating around Twitter at halftime of this game.

I think it was Strahan on the Fox halftime show said that Deshaun Watson was 0 for 25 on third-down conversions.

I don't know if that streak is still intact, but it was at halftime.

They finally broke it on like a screen pass.

They finally broke it.

It was really funny.

It was

insane.

So obviously the Browns are lost, and the quarterback plays the worst in the league, and you got to make a change.

But week after week, this is what we get from the head coach, Kevin Stefansky.

Where do you stick with Deshaun Watson after this game?

Yes.

And I'm so sick of hearing this.

Like,

at a certain point, the, oh, we all feel so sorry for Kevin narrative, I'm done with that.

And it's like, you can't, how is there not a revolution in that locker room at this point?

Unless the team is checked out totally,

Stefansky needs to save not just the season, but like

I'm losing respect for the guy to continue to send this quarterback out on the field.

And then after the game, look the other direction and say, Yeah, we're sticking with this guy.

Where I'm no Jameis Winston fan, Mark, but I know that he gives this team a better chance the way it is set up right now.

Stefansky, like getting the pass because he's not the one who traded for Deshaun Watson.

Like, no, to me, he's part of this stew as well.

And either make a move or be part of the failure.

He's completely part of it because, yet, we can argue he doesn't have the power to do it, but you're still agreeing to sleep on a $900 pillow every night to do this job.

Like, if you truly were someone, if you were like, you know, I am going to take on me versus the world and stand up for what I believe in.

And if you don't believe in this situation, then you could have moved off this a while ago.

We already have proof that you can coach other quarterbacks.

And so why wouldn't you, mentally in your mind, want to explore the idea of Jameis Winston or explore the chance of anyone else?

Because this is not working.

And it's not working, it's not just the play, it's not working on so many levels.

That why do we sit down on Sundays and watch these sports?

Why do we watch athletes?

Why do we do what we do?

And this doesn't check any of those boxes.

And Kevin Stefansky is not, to me, has never struck me as someone who is sort of an evil-prone type individual.

It's the opposite.

He's got daughters.

Like, he cares about his locker room.

He's praised players for the right reasons in the past and elevated them.

So I'm with you.

I'm mystified.

I'm annoyed.

But I'm almost like we talk about this now three times a week.

It's like, I don't know what else.

We are all left in a place of powerlessness because they're not willing to do what's right.

My only theory at this point,

and I was bouncing this off people this week, right, is could it be a point where you can't, you you have to make sure that you don't miss, right?

Like, if you play Jameis, like he's got to light it up and he's got to score in the first drive, and it's got to be so, such a no-doubter that Watson is just buried on the bench then forever.

Because if Winston looks any worse, then you're in an absolute hell spiral because you have Watson on the bench, and there's that discontent, and maybe that's when he starts.

Yeah, but how is that worse than what's going on right now?

Like,

how is it worse?

It's just living with this week to week just seems to be a non-working setup for the entire organization.

That's what surprises me.

And the fact, the other thing, the fact that Stefanski shuts it down immediately, like in these press conferences, and maybe that's because

discourse.

Yeah, maybe that's because, and I understand the media can be ferocious, and especially on this story, once he opens the door, it's a feeding frenzy.

So he's probably just going to shut it down immediately.

So maybe I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe he's saying that now, and maybe there's conversations, hard conversations being had at the facility.

But part of me thinks the dysfunction is so deep-rooted that we're just going to see this guy out here the next week and the week after that and the week after that, regardless of his output, which is nil.

I don't know.

But that's not even their only problem, right?

Like, Mark, this is a team, the Browns that have struggled kind of all the way around and

on both sides of the ball this year, and they're one of the biggest disappointments in the league.

Well, they are.

I mean, so they're not, and I think we've all, we all get it that, like, there was no assuming or no assumption or presumption that the defense from last year, which really, if you look at the splits down the stretch last year, like they were pretty ghastly on the road, number one, as a defense.

They were great at home and had a really intense stretch where they maximized under Jim Schwartz at home.

They aren't that defense on any level.

I will say, in terms of like, have we lost the locker room?

I think this defense, I think you've got a separated locker room, but I see a defense that has incredible incredible pride and they play with pride and they still care.

And Miles Garrett still cares.

But you were just overdone today because like the Eagles are, they're no perfect creation, but they are a different team when you have your two wide receivers back because I think it lowers some of the turnover worthy plays for Jalen Hurts.

Like A.J.

Brown is a big difference maker.

And the problem for Cleveland is when you are not doing anything with offense, when you are not staying on the field, that at some point the bow breaks.

And the bow just breaks on this defense every week.

And I I don't really blame them.

It's just they can't, it's not functional.

Like half of your roster is functioning.

Former Browns offensive tackle Mitchell Schwartz had a good tweet that is getting passed around a lot.

It was a quote retweet.

Stefanski asked if the Browns will stick with Deshaun Watson.

Yes.

Schwartz writes, it's incredibly shitty to do this to the rest of the team.

Joel Battonio is out there every week playing through who knows what and has to wreck his body when they have no chance of being good because of the QB.

Miles Garrett is playing in pain every week.

Feel for everyone else there.

So, I mean, how is it not chaos behind the scenes there?

I mean,

it's got to be.

Man.

Is there anything else on the game before we move on?

Non-Browns related?

I mean, we could talk for, we could, we could talk for an hour and a half about it if we'd like, but I think we've covered some of the major problems.

Anything on the Eagles, I said.

Anything non-Browns related?

The Eagles, to me, played a much worse team.

I don't have a lot of trust trust in the Eagles.

I also would say, and I know this is a little more talky than football-y, but, like, what is Siriani doing when he's

screaming at fans?

Like, I mean, that's fine, but like, this is, this guy is a bit of a...

Let's pull that up.

He's a ham actor.

He's a stage actor.

He shaved his head before the game.

So good.

Chirping at the fans after squeaking out a win against the Browns is certainly something.

Part of me loves it, but it's like, what are we doing here?

I wrote about this tofus.

And I went back.

If you just Google Nick Siriani yelling at people or on Twitter, there's like 120 examples.

Like, did you know that during the Super Bowl against the Chiefs, they got a first down overturned and he's like gesturing like, first down, yeah.

And Jalen Hurts took his hand and put it down at his side.

Like,

I don't understand how Philadelphia doesn't love this man unconditionally.

I did.

I love him.

Until they stop winning, you know.

Yes.

But cheap.

He's been a little up and down.

Yeah.

I love him.

All right.

Let's take a break and then we will continue on.

You may have heard by now that Heed the Call with Dan Hanses and Mark Sessler is on Underdog.

So why not start playing on Underdog today?

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So don't miss out.

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All right, Justin, I feel like after the latest sideline shenanigans from Siriani, it's time to bring back.

A fan favorite from last year.

Nick Siriani is the guy who, let's play along, folks.

Nick Siriani is the guy who reminisces fondly about his experience at Woodstock 99.

Nick Siriani is the guy who doesn't get why women have a problem when he takes their picture at the gym.

It's a compliment.

Nick Siriani is the guy who scans every check closely to see if the cute waitress wrote down her number.

Nick Siriani is the guy who says, I like hooters for the wings, winks, then punches you in the arm way too hard.

Nick Siriani is the guy who daydreams about going to a UFC match with Pat McAfee.

Nick Siriani is the guy doing pull-ups on the swing set when he takes the kids to the park.

Nick Siriani is the guy that sends that gif of Shaq laughing when his fantasy opponent gets his fantasy opponent's QB gets carted off the field.

Nick Siriani still does the Dane Cook shocker.

I tried not to laugh at like half of them, though, so it just made me laugh hard.

That's another edition of Nick Siriani is the guy who.

I mean,

what a goon.

All right, moving on.

What do we got next?

Let's head to Foxborough, where another first-round pick quarterback was making his big debut.

Conman

In Dr.

Becky's seminal book on child rearing called Good Inside, the doctor concludes her tone by saying, now you have your job description.

Keep your child safe emotionally and physically using boundaries, validation, and empathy.

The Patriots read this and said, f ⁇ it.

Let's start our bouncing baby boy against the goddamn Houston, Texans.

The Patriots lost 41-21, but May fared surprisingly well.

20 of 33, 243 yards, three touchdowns, two picks.

Best performance by a Patriots quarterback all year.

Houston, meanwhile, tight and efficient, three touchdowns for C.J.

Stroud and 108 rushing yards for Joe Mixon, who's back, baby.

Mixon's back.

And, you know, yeah, we'll start with the positive for the losing team that we did worry about the May situation and what he was stepping into, but I think he already has more touchdowns now than Jake Brisket.

And what did you see from him overall in his debut?

I thought he had total command of that offense.

And he had the touchdown was the long touchdown to Kayshawn Boude was the longest touchdown by air yards by a Patriots quarterback since 2022,

which is phenomenal.

I mean, he threw a dime.

It was like 58, 57, 58 yards in the air.

Whenever he got man coverage, he attacked it.

Whenever there was pressure, he checked it down.

And he ran quite a bit, but not in in like a frantic way.

Like it was just taking what the defense gave him.

I thought, all in all, just a very measured game by him.

And I was wildly impressed.

This was the sixth different offensive line lineup that the Patriots have had all year.

They lost another three guys.

They had the center in the game that they signed on like Wednesday.

No Ramondre Stevenson.

And he still played a really good game.

So I think all arrows are up.

And credit to Gerard Mayo.

I mean, this was a game where he could have gotten slaughtered and you could have really stalled his development.

But it seems like he earned everybody's respect, earned everybody's trust, and was actually kind of the perfect time to put him in.

Hmm.

I mean, that is a very cheery look on it.

But at the same time,

from a more global Patriot side, like what's going on with this team giving up 41 points?

Gerard Mayo is supposed to be the defensive guy, and I feel like they haven't made a lot of progress on that side of the ball.

There were,

I mean, the Texans just ran through this team.

You know, like Joe Mixon and Damian Pierce.

Remember Damian Pierce?

Like they both averaged over seven yards a carry.

They both had 50 plus yard carries in this game and they were just completely torn apart.

And, you know, it was one of those games where I felt like there were a couple moments where you thought, oh, maybe the Patriots could actually just get back in here.

And then the Texans would just absolutely slaughter them on the next drive offensively.

It's so interesting to see how different they are with mix and back because you have to hark back to week one and how balanced they are.

And

you're running for 192 yards.

Stroud only threw for 192 himself.

It's like, I love that because you don't have any Nico Collins right now.

And so I was, my question was like,

and not so much against the Patriots, but just in general, like, I think I watched them last week sort of melt away a little bit on offense when Collins went out.

And so I was concerned.

It was like, is that sort of the Stroud's secret sauce in terms of just he's got this connection with him?

This is encouraging.

It did come against New England, but like,

I really think that if you can run the ball this way, like you're built to last deep into the terrible weather and the darkness of later autumn into winter.

Yeah, they're a different team with Joe Mixon on the field, and we saw it again.

This is a good stat per next gen.

Mixon had 55 rushing yards over expectation, which is the most by a Texans running back this season.

So, you know, when you suffer the ankle injury, I think it was a high ankle sprain or maybe close to it.

You worry how that lingers and will you have that explosiveness, having that type of data point tells you that Mixon looked like Mixon and they could use him with Collins out.

Absolutely.

I mean, almost to the point where if you're Houston and, you know, at the Combine, you heard all these whispers about them being so desperately in on Saquon Barkley, same idea, right?

That you wonder that as we're kind of railroading into this trade deadline, do you think that they try to layer some depth here?

Because it's not just about power running or else Damian Pierce would have been satisfactory there.

It's that checkdown option.

It's what he adds in pass protection.

Could they try to add another back of that caliber?

Because once you remove him from the equation, they're not nearly the same offense that they were.

All right, let's move on.

The Patriots, by the way, they look like they are on the inside track for the number one overall pick.

They don't need a quarterback, but maybe the Titans do.

I don't know.

Justin?

I don't know, Jim.

Is this Will Levis going to make it?

I don't know.

Take it.

What do you get when you combine a struggling young quarterback with a head coach and play caller who doesn't trust his passing game?

You get three and a half yards per attempt from Will Levis and a weekly meme.

The Colts decided to sit Anthony Richardson for one more game, and it paid off as the ageless wonder, aka Joe Flacco, continued his league-leading, active streak of eight straight games with two or more passing touchdowns on route to a Colts come-from-behind win in Nashville 20-17.

Huh.

All right, so.

Let's dig into this one a little bit.

Yeah, the Richardson thing came down on Sunday morning.

I think it felt like he was going to be back.

It's the right move because you have a very capable backup in Flacco, but he wasn't pristine in this game either, was he, Justin?

He wasn't.

I think that he made the timely plays.

The first half, both offenses really struggled to put anything together.

The Titans touchdown came.

The Colts opened the game with a beautiful long touchdown drive that was like, you know, they followed the 15-place script or whatever, and they got in the end zone.

And then their offense really just stalled out from there.

The Titans got their points in the first half off of an overthrow from Flacco that he basically threw right to Titan safety Imani Hooker.

Not a good play by Flacco there.

But then in the second half, they just converted on plays when they needed to convert.

They converted a fourth and one to Josh Downs, although that drive ended in a fourth and goal field goal anyway.

And he actually had Alec Pierce open down the field a couple of times late in the game, and he just airmailed him and missed him.

And that would have sealed the deal a little bit more easily, I guess, for the Colts.

The Titans, it was weird.

The Titans were in control of this game.

They were leading 17 to 13 13 with the ball at the start of the fourth quarter, and they quickly proceeded to go three and out.

They totaled 39 yards of offense in the fourth quarter, including two three and outs, one interception, and a game-ending lateral play that ended with Will Levis getting absolutely pummeled as he tried to get back on the ball to lateral it again.

The Colts really couldn't run the ball at all on the Titans' front, but it didn't matter because the Flacco Josh Downs connection was clutch on like third downs and in the red zone, but really the Flacco Michael Pittman Jr.

connection.

Pittman Jr.

was not super active in this game.

He came into the game.

Like earlier in the week, there was talk of him going on an IR with a back injury.

And I guess this morning he got like a painkiller injection and they said,

he was like, I'm good to go.

So he decided to play.

Yeah, I'm sure that's great for his long-term health.

See how he feels about that when he's 45.

I said that to some friends today.

Michael Pittman made the game, the go-ahead touchdown grab over Legeria Sneed.

It was really good coverage and he just went higher than the cornerback and Sneed had his arm like in there between Pittman's arms and he just held onto the ball and made the made the catch.

And then on a third down play that essentially sealed it, I mean the Titans ended up getting the ball back with 20 seconds.

But this play that they got a first down on allowed them to run the clock all the way down to, I guess, it was 12 seconds left when the Titans had their last gasp because Pittman made another contested grab over Legerius Snead to get that first down and allow the Colts to run off most of the clock.

So let's let's give some credit to Rigoberto Sanchez, the punter of the Colts, who coffin corners it to basically end the game.

And that was not his only super deep pin punt.

Like he did that a couple times.

I'm going to read the punter stat line.

How about that?

We've got

crazy.

Five punts, 271 yards, 54.2 average, one touchback, three inside the 20, a long of 60.

Was the 60-yarder the one that clinched it?

Doesn't matter.

If it wasn't, it was 53 or something.

Anyway, great job by Sanchez.

And I'll also say this, Con say this, Justin, because we had a conversation last week where your head coach said, there's no way we're not moving forward with Will Levis.

But what you're saying, checks out,

if what you're saying is true, and I believe it to be, because I know you understand this team, if the coach and the OC do not trust the quarterback, we cannot be sending out a quarterback that's going to throw up for 95 yards and three and a half yards per attempt every week.

You either have to open it up or you got to get him out of there.

But you can't do this half measure where you're playing Stone Age football because it's not going to work.

I fully agree.

I feel like there's two competing interests happening right now for the Titans.

On the one hand, they're trying to win.

This is a new coaching staff.

The GMs in a second year.

Like, they have time to show that they are improving and figuring it out.

But at one in four or one in three going into this game, at some point, you've got to win.

You've got to beat your division rivals.

On the other hand, they're trying to find out if Will Levis is going to be a franchise quarterback.

They're trying to not destroy his confidence.

So they're asking him to just throw these quick little screens and these little flare outs.

And even the touchdown that he threw was on like a fake screen where the receiver who was, you know, going to be the blocker leaked up the field and was wide open because they had run already in five plays before the touchdown.

They had run three quick screen type passes.

And so then on the sixth play, you run the fourth one and you fake out the defense.

It's just all in the interest of making it easy for Will Levis, right?

Don't ask him to throw down the field.

Don't ask him to read the defense.

So they're trying to like manage that and get a win out of it so that he doesn't throw the game away.

But at the same time, if you're trying to win, Will Levis is not the quarterback to win the game.

Well, here's the other problem,

let him throw it or take the exception.

Here's the other problem.

You give Calvin Ridley a $92 million contract in free agency, and you target that man.

It's not for a lack of trying.

You target that man eight times today.

His final stat line, I'll read it: 0, 0, 0.0, 0, 0.

And this is what I said afterwards.

Is that a positive?

Yeah, this is what he said afterwards.

All right, then.

So, shit, I need some in the beginning of the fing game, too, then.

Like, she's getting crazy with me.

So, I'm just, no, it is what it is.

Yeah, that's yikes.

Yeah.

And you gotta, you gotta, you got a locker room.

You got a locker room, and that's one of the highest paid players

and a veteran.

Like, that tells you a lot.

There's eight targets.

One of them was catchable from my estimation watching this game live.

He dropped it.

He should have caught it.

The other seven, one was like really late and underthrown.

That was the interception.

And the other six were like super low, super like on the side, like into tight windows, like bouncing the ball at his feet, like trying.

He wasn't open on most of these targets, which I don't know if that's his fault, the offensive fault, Levis making the wrong read or whatever.

But it's not like he had eight targets and he should have caught them.

It was like he had eight off.

target balls that how is he anyone going to catch any of these anyway?

I mean, the story to me is Shane Steichen because it's the second year in a row that, like, you're winning games without your starting quarterback who can't stay in the lineup.

And I know it's Joe Flacco, and he's a bit of a superhero at this point, but like, that's impressive.

You don't have Jonathan Taylor.

Like, you don't have a running game today.

You're right.

A Pittman is like basically someone that I'm sure he was not even close to 100%.

Like, the Colts keep winning without their starters in the lineup two years in a row under Steichen.

That's why they're dangerous.

All right.

Helps to play.

I think think Kelly left this game with an injury, too, and did not return.

So that's something to watch.

All right.

Keep an eye on it.

Let's move forward.

Let's head to the desert.

Ooh, Jaunty.

Don't let the sticky bandits know, but half the homes in Pittsburgh are empty on Sunday night.

You know how I know?

I watched Steelers Raiders played in Vegas, where Allegiant Stadium was packed with 50,000 Yinsers, cheering the road team, air quotes, to a 32-13 win over Aiden O'Connell and the Raiders.

And gee, wouldn't you know it, a swap of the quarterback did not cure all that ailed the home Raiders.

So,

again, I do not enjoy it, I do it professionally.

I get paid to do it, watching the Steelers.

And

I still feel this way.

I don't, they are not, I respect the process of the Pittsburgh Steelers and how they build a roster that is competitive and how

they have in TJ Watt

a game-wrecking presence.

You could argue that TJ Watt was responsible for a 13-point swing in this game with dynamic plays.

All that's respectful.

I still struggle to watch his offense, and I know they keep winning with Justin Fields.

They're 4-2 now, but he did not play well in this game.

His stats

are

pedestrian: 14 of 24, 145 yards, passing, 11 for 59 on the ground.

But upon closer inspection, he had a terrible interception in the red zone that was negated by a Fughese.

I mean, you want to talk about not real,

roughing the passer penalty.

And he had plenty of bad throws, off-target throws, that cost them chances to put up points.

So with Russell Wilson, who is a healthy number two

in this game, ready for the Jets next week, I wonder if

Tomlin would ever think about it.

I don't think he will, though, because I don't think that's Tomlin's style.

But yeah, the Steelers did just enough on offense and then the Raiders kind of did the rest in terms of imploding.

So the Steelers get a W.

I was wondering if this, Dan, would be the exact week to do it, right?

Because you declared Russell Wilson, the starter, out of the gate, and then the only thing that negated that idea was the injury.

And so if he came back and you weren't happy about what Justin Fields is doing, and God, I thought if he just knew where he was on that one play and actually threw that touchdown to Pat Fryermuth, we would have been a little bit feeling a little bit better about him going into this.

But if you wanted to make the change, this is the week you would do it because you would say, wow, I always said that Russell Wilson was a starter and now he's healthy.

Right.

I totally agree.

Like you have that, the logic checks out.

I just wonder if they want to mess with the, with the stew because it does work, especially when you play a lesser opponent like this.

They, they're built to kind of grind out these type of victories because the Raiders, Mark, in this game, are really in a bad spot because you got O'Connell, who's who he is, and we'll see what kind of player he turns into.

But Devontae Adams, and by the way, spare me, spare me, football media machine.

Like, we don't need, like, I saw tweets sent out last night by the various insiders that, oh, it now appears that the Raiders could be open to keeping Devontae Adams.

We know what that means.

We know this is all part of the dance.

And now that they're not getting what they want in trade offers, they're going to make it seem like they still, we,

miss Miss us with all this.

Just get back to us when the trade happens, okay?

Do all your little behind-the-scenes maneuvering and texts and favors, like back and forth, and just let us know when Devontae Adams is on a new team because there's no chance Devontae Adams ever plays for the Raiders again.

So don't send out that report telling us that it could be the way.

It's insulting to us, the people.

We the people, Sess Dog.

Yeah, well, you're, I mean, there has to be some slight annoyance on your part because the Jets were the main friend.

No, it has literally nothing to do with the Jets because I think what ails the Jets is way beyond a 31-year-old wide receiver joining the fray in October.

I'm just like,

maybe I've been too close to how the sausage gets made now for that it actually actively annoys me when I see an Adam Shafie, it's not Schefter's fault.

He does great work, but like

a Schefter tweet telling us, like, it's basically just a lie.

Like,

it's part of the deal.

Connor, like, you're close to it too.

Like, why are you lying to us?

You know what you're reporting isn't true.

Like, we know what you're reporting is is false, and what the actual outcome is going to be.

So, why are we even doing this?

I do wonder who it's all for, you know.

And uh, I think that's what it is because, like, like, let's say you're Joe Douglas.

For, you know, do you think that Joe Douglas is watching NFL game day morning and then they're like, the Raiders might keep him now?

And he's like, oh shit, what do I do?

Like, no,

he's had an ongoing

ongoing text.

He's had a text chain chain with Tom Tolesco for the last like four weeks.

And it's like, hey, I'll give you a four and a four.

No, just like wait a week so I can tell Mark Davis that I did a tried harder.

And then you leak that.

And then Mark Davis is like, oh, look at what a good job he's doing.

And then it's like, okay, I'll still give you a four and a four.

And then like a seven the year after that.

Okay, cool.

Well, we did it.

You know, and everybody, high five.

Like, all these guys are friends.

Like, they're all like.

And we're the ones that just get dragged along with all this misinformation for the benefit of this inside the world.

I still don't understand.

Why is it for gamblers or like or casuals?

I don't know.

Like, why is anyone watching a pregame show to begin with at this point?

Oh, well, there's certainly an element of football fans, not taking shots here, but how they do that, that are like, oh, now Devontae Adams won't be traded anymore.

Like, some people take it as gospel.

But if you're even remotely paying attention to how

the sausage gets made, the trade will happen.

The problem for you, Dan, is, and this is just a fork in the road for you.

And it's gonna you know it's a bit of a burden.

You're too savvy.

You know, you know too much.

You're too savvy.

Put it this way.

I am the HDC media insider.

You never hear me floating that garbage to make an agent or a

no no no.

Connor and Justin and I, we all know that you you never would.

We know that.

Anyway, so but O'Connell was put in a bad spot here because no Devontae Adams, no Jacoby Myers.

There was no element of a threat of a downfield passing again.

Their running backs are Dylan Lau.

See, I don't even know how to pronounce his last name, Laub?

Laub.

Yeah, I think he was on Little House on the Prairie like season four.

And then Amir Abdullah, who, you know, fumbles at the goal line, which is just, come on, like just these killer situations, and it's aging Antonio Pierce in real time, like a two-time sitting president.

Anyway, tough stuff for the Raiders, and the Steelers roll forward, and now we'll wonder who the quarterback will be moving forward.

Let's move forward ourselves, but not before this break.

We'll be, oh, do we have the Charles Davis thing before we go?

All right.

Charles Davis, so it's at Vegas.

They come back from a break, and it's the sphere, you know, the big concert venue.

And then, you know, Eagles, the classic rock act,

sold-out show.

They're doing a residency there now.

And this was a nice little nug from our bud, Charles Davis.

I was one of about five brothers at the concert.

You would have gotten a kick out of it, Diane.

The security guy, he kind of looked at me.

Another brother's like, really?

You're here for this?

And by the way, Iron Eagle, as, you know, a lot of guys are, totally uncomfortable.

He's like,

oh, Charles, you and your stories.

You and your race stories?

I love Charles Davis.

We are big fans of CD.

Yes, we are.

I would go to an Eagles concert with CD.

I went to that Eagles concert.

Oh, right.

Gravedigger was at that concert.

Also, Gravedigger also suffered a compound fracture, I learned earlier today.

Yes, but not your leg, you said.

It was

a different part of your body.

It was compound fractured.

When I was 13 years old, I was riding my bike and I flew over the handlebars, and both of these bones sort of snapped in half, and this one came out.

I still have a skin.

Yeah.

Morning.

Pretty bad.

Does the arm feel

totally normal now?

Oh, good.

But I broke my left elbow at one point in my life, too, and I cannot touch my fist to my shoulder now.

Like this.

See, it's easy on this side.

I cannot.

It's you gave us too much information.

Let's take a break.

Let's take a break.

By the way, but you could go on Twitter now and do like the Dr.

Graver thing.

It's like, my arm is fully healed, as will

as will Aiden Hutchinson's leg and forevermore.

All right, anyway, let's take a break.

Qualified blue check.

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All right, we are back.

SessDog, take us to the Mile High Club.

Oh, I love this all.

Our cities are filled with covert spaces and secret late-night clubs where Americans do things they will never admit.

Broncos Chargers offered something different, overt power.

The vision of the Chargers, like it or not, came into view.

With Jim Harbaugh going to the blue tent to deal with an atrial flutter in which the upper chambers of his heart beat 250 to 350 times per minute, his brother-in-arms took over.

Yes, it was just a field goal drive, but humans witnessed a Greg Roman scripted 76-yard march that peeled nearly 11 minutes off the clock over 20 plays.

On four scoring drives in this game, Harbaugh's bunch went for nine-plus plays, nearly 40 minutes of possession, 75 snaps.

They aren't the sexiest, but they're bloody.

They thump, they bite.

Chargers 23, Broncos 16.

Yeah, we had another game here, Marcus.

I was all hot on the

Broncos after the last two weeks, but then I saw at halftime, it was another one of those, not just a bad half of football by the Denver offense, but like pitiful, like how you could stumble into more yards than that, and yet what happened?

They had another bad day.

Yes.

I mean, to answer that question, yes.

I think that

in terms of what's happening with Denver's offense, it just seems like a week-to-week proposition.

This was, though, this is the Chargers defense that, and I know the Broncos have got the least amount of points per game.

Chargers are tied with Steelers for number two, and they looked like it today.

And it really came down to, I look at you, look at time and possession.

They kept Denver off the field.

They were able to run the ball well enough.

I thought this was more of a Justin Herbert game than we've seen this season, where he's really been kind of hidden.

He made a couple of big throws, and they stayed on the field.

And there were these long marches where I think with Knicks, it's like, I think he needs to get into a flow a little bit.

And he just couldn't do it today.

And that offense to me is like a you don't know what you're gonna get each week and the chargers just matched up well against them and it like and I get it like I think I'm a little more into the concept of what the chargers are trying to do than some people because it's not fun to watch it isn't but that said when it works it's like it's just basically like Big Ten football basically we're gonna go beat you up we're gonna run the ball 38 times today we're gonna control the ball for almost 40 minutes and you're not gonna get a chance to do what you plan to do on offense Well, you know what?

I like 34 passing attempts for Justin Herbert, which you said a lot of running attempts and a lot of passing attempts.

They had the ball the whole game, basically.

But I just want to, I guess what I want to see, Mark, is like, don't make Justin Herbert some game manager where he's thrown for 175 yards and a touchdown every game.

I hope for the sake of the entertainment value of pro football that Herbert isn't hidden in this offense to the point where he's just blending in with the furniture.

It's totally fair because it's like, wait a minute, this this is a really good quarterback who, like, you've got a, you've got Harbaugh, who is like a quarterback whisperer type with a quarterback that should be doing more.

I think part of it is the parts around them.

Like, I thought Lad McConkey, like, every week he made plays.

He did a nice job today.

They've got this other player today, Kamani Vidal, who's 5'8 ⁇ and 215 pounds.

I'm 5'8.

And if I were 215 pounds, it's not because it's low.

You know, it's not going to look good on me, not the way it would on him.

But like he...

You got there.

I was like, how's he going to land this plane?

No,

he looked like a little a piece.

And so I think they just need more pieces.

I mean, they cut their...

That's sexy.

In 2024, they cut like half their targets off the roster.

So it's not Herbert's offense from a year ago.

I see what they're trying to do, but they're not fun to watch for many people.

Okay.

Connor, anything on this one?

I'll say that Patrick Sertan went out with a concussion, which sucks because he's been playing out of his mind.

Yeah.

So obviously that is something to keep an eye on for Denver.

And yeah, I guess they came close to getting shut out.

They got a couple of scores there at the end.

Yeah, Cordland Sutton made maybe the catch of the year, too.

So they're, you know, it's going to happen in little pieces.

Let's, before we get to Sunday Night Football, we have one more game to hit.

So we throw it back to Justin Graver.

Take us to Charlotte, the place we all want to be right now.

Oh, do it, Connor.

Hit us one.

The second NFC South duel of the day saw Kirk Cousins lead a ground and pound attack that wore down the Panthers' defense and beat them into submission by the end of the game.

Andy Dalton kept the Panthers close in the first half, but Carolina was undone by a string of self-inflicted errors that have haunted this team all season.

In this game, three false starts, one bad snap, a bad drop, blown blocks, and a play where Andy Dalton tried to hand the ball off to no one and had simply had just had to dive forward to avoid a loss.

Plus two Dalton fourth quarter interceptions.

This game was close though until the Falcons put together a nine-play 84-yard drive, including seven run plays covering 70 of those 84 yards and scored to go up by 15 points with just 538 remaining.

Atlanta left Charlotte with a 38-20 victory.

Connor, like

the keep hounding guy, like it's gotten to the point now when you when you do the keep pounding that I wonder if like socially, societally, I'm even like allowed to laugh at a guy like that.

You know what I mean?

Okay, yeah, so I can see that.

It's yeah.

I think I need to kind of liven him up a little bit.

I would never want to mess with your process.

I'm just saying at that point, it was the first time where I was kind of like, do I need to maybe ask more questions about the background of this potential?

Well, you know, I don't know if you guys remember the great, like, the night that it it really got out of control, like after the Broncos, Panthers, Super Bowl.

And you guys taped the podcast at like a studio.

And so my instructions for the night were to secure any and all alcohol.

And so I went into this place that was open at like 1.45 in the morning.

I bought two bottles of Patron and like five of these like carafs of like this bizarre lager.

And we just sat there in the

we just sat there in the hotel lobby drinking.

By the time that Wes and I had had like nine drinks, like keep pounding became like, you know, keep pounding.

I haven't, because I quite like Patron, Silver, Tequila, and, and I remember it going down so easy that night.

Those end post-Super Bowl shows were always great, especially when Wes was around.

And

yes, that's a good memory.

So, okay, so maybe it's just a very drunk man.

I feel better about it now.

Yeah, it became, yeah, I think it, and it just, the more we did it like that, the funnier it sounded.

But I do agree that there's a, that there's a range and you have to hit it within there or else, you know.

You start having to ask uncomfortable questions.

That's all over the trouble.

Yeah.

All right, on the game.

Yes, there was a moment in this game where somebody, I think it was maybe like an ex-player or a guest.

I wasn't paying close enough attention, but somebody was beating the deep-pounding drum.

Sorry.

And because it was between plays, and then they

were teasing the mascot for like getting his hands too close.

They're like, watch out.

Don't, don't get hit by the drum beat.

And the guy who was doing the swinging dented like a big dent in the drum.

It was pretty ridiculous.

Keep pounding.

That was the game.

This wasn't a pretty win for Atlanta, despite the 18-point final margin of victory, because at times the passing game just looked really difficult.

Like some of these conversions, they were leaning on defensive penalties by Carolina.

There was a wild play where a pass over the middle got tipped into the air and it easily could have been intercepted.

And Ray Ray McLeod just like swoops in out of nowhere to catch it and pick up the first down.

But in the fourth quarter, Raheem Morris and Zach Robinson, they relied on Bijan Robinson and Tyler Algier to close out this game.

The two of them combined for 200 yards on the ground, three rushing touchdowns on the ground on just 33 total attempts between the two of them.

So if this recipe for Atlanta can work, like they haven't, keep in mind, Atlanta hasn't won a game where they were like leading until the final seconds yet this year.

So in this one, they have a lead in the fourth quarter and they're able to, I think, execute more what the vision of this team is, which is to just pound you into submission in the fourth quarter with a drive that covers 84 yards with 70 on the ground.

Yeah, pound you into submission against the Panthers.

But

yeah, so.

Not having to rely on Kirk Cousins to put together a miracle end-of-game drive to go get the win.

Probably has.

Where's that stat?

Atlanta led by more than eight points for the first time all season.

And

closing out a team and taking care of business is good and establishing a running game, like you're saying, is something they hadn't done all year.

In fact, they entered action with the fifth fewest rushing yards in the league, and they more than doubled their yards per game in this game.

So these are positive things.

Coming off a 500-yard cousins performance, these wins they've been getting, Justin, have been great and exciting and stunning, but not necessarily the type of play that leads to actually successful seasons.

You got to have some of these grind-out-the-dub type victories, too.

So, add that to the ledger.

Absolutely.

And I don't know if you want to take it grain of salt because of your opponent and know that maybe this won't work every week, but it doesn't have to work every week.

It just has to work enough weeks to get you to the playoffs.

Well said.

Well said.

All right.

To Sunday night football.

Oh,

Sunday night.

It was gut check time for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Tied with the Giants in the second half their season flashing before their eyes.

But a big fourth down stop, a long Chase Brown run,

and crucially, a Chase Brown fumble that bounced and skidded out of bounds.

And if the Bengals do find a way to get their season back on track, remember that play.

Final score, Cincinnati 17, New York, the G-Men, 7 from the Meadowlands.

Mark, another game where

when you think you kind of figure out the Bengals, like, okay, now their offense is fixed, and now it's the defense.

It's the offense that cannot get things going in this game, but the defense stepped up and made the stops necessary to keep their season alive, more or less.

They did.

You put up 25 on the Chiefs, 33 on the Commanders, 34 on the Panthers.

We get that.

The four of us could do that.

38 on the Ravens, and then tonight happens.

I think it's a little bit of a Giants factor.

I think the Giants, like, I'm a little annoyed by this game.

Can I just be honest?

Like, I haven't.

We always want you to be honest on this program, Mark.

Go ahead.

Well, I like to lie a lot too.

I like to see you.

But in this case, let's turn over a new leaf starting now.

Okay.

Well,

I was going to

come into a world where Giants have always been a pet team of mine.

They kind of fascinate me.

They're a little nasty.

They're angry.

They're imperfect.

They're strange.

And I think they're pass-rush.

It kind of sounds like you a little bit.

Yeah, that's right.

But if you go back to what they did to Seattle, right?

They blistered Geno Smith.

They created total havoc.

And I thought they were about to do it tonight.

And it didn't happen.

I'm more coming from the Giants angle, just to be honest, because it's like, I think

the Bengals survive, but something about the Brian Dayball New York Giants have this energy to them.

We're like, oh, well, all right, Mark.

Can we calm down with the C-poles?

I knew 3Ds at Not Life Stadium.

Like, are we really going to lead this by talking about how cool the Giants are?

I mean, come on.

I can't help it.

Like, I like, like, I was just sort of thinking this game was really fun to me.

But, you know, the Bengals survived.

They got just enough.

But I'm more saying, like, why did that happen?

Why is tonight not a misstep?

Connor, how about this?

Giants' defense is pretty good.

It's pretty damn good.

And even without Kayvon Thibodeau, their line can go get it.

And Joe Burrow got his ass kicked in this game.

And it may be a worse quarterback, Connor, throws the ball up for grabs a few times and makes some critical mistakes.

And the Giants steal this game, and the Bengals are getting ready for 2025.

But that's not how it played out.

And they did what they had to do against an opponent that is, to Mark's point, I guess, like better than people give them credit for, but still an opponent that you absolutely have to beat at one and four with everything on the line.

I mean, Joe Burrow is so amazing that like the two plays that he made in this game, it's like a 47-yard touchdown run, and then to seal the game on like third and 13, a throw across his body to like your fifth string wide receiver who's toe-dragging out of bounds.

And throughout the rest of the game, the Giants managed to tamp all that down, but you know, it's inevitable at some point.

He still is that good.

Yeah, and you know what?

Thank God, even though I still didn't love the process,

how they called it, because last week I was furious about it because Burrow is playing the best football of his life, and they called the three runs in overtime that preceded the missed 55-yard field goal.

In this situation,

they don't do much better, to be honest with you, when they're trying to ice the game.

They run the ball once, they run it outside for a loss of, I believe, three, then they run it straight into the line, and it's third and 12, and now they're in shotgun with an empty formation.

So it's like, once again, you're putting your, first of all, you don't, you didn't let Joe win the game last week.

Now you put him on an empty formation, third and 12 against that Giants pass rush.

And two Burroughs' credit, his ability to extend that play and then put it right on the money to a player who's not one of his impact stars.

That's the special sauce and why

I can't quit the Bengals, even though even this game, I'm still kind of like, guys, I mean, this is the best you could do, like in terms of the urgency meter on a 12 out of 10, like

squeaking by the Giants, fumbling the ball with under two minutes to play, like almost, almost buyers in the situation.

Like, come on.

They're not a great football team.

Like, and I, I, I think on, what, last Wednesday, where did I put them at number nine or something overall?

And I don't, I don't, I know why I did that, but like.

Are you asking us where you put them?

No, I put them in, like, I put them at, like, number nine, but, like, they can't run the ball very well.

They don't have like a foundational running back that helps you in some of these situations.

And I think their defense is a disaster.

Tonight it wasn't, but it's like they've got major gaping holes.

And like,

so

you know what?

We're at the point of the night where I'm just going to let that, I'll just, I'm going to just let that like bookend my comment.

All right, good.

Yeah.

I'm not wrong, though.

They're an incomplete team.

Of course, they are.

I mean, the fact that they enter this game where they were

tells you so much about them.

But guess what?

They got the Giants win, and then they get to go to Cleveland.

You know, the Browns are an absolute mess right now, so you like their chances in that game.

And then you see what they get, see where they're at at that point.

But a much-needed win.

Burrow made the big play at the end.

And,

you know, Jamar Chase was mostly bottled up in this game, but on the drive where they kicked the go-ahead field goal, he had a big catch and a big

run.

So it's like you saw in bits and pieces what Cincinnati needs to do, but

to beat the big-time teams, you need a better all-around effort.

It was just enough today.

Meanwhile, the Giants at the end of the season are going to look at possibly two playoff teams.

If the Bengals really do turn this around and get into the mix in the AFC and the Commanders, two teams that they would have beaten or at least taken into overtime if they had a field goal career.

It's wow.

Tough.

Wow.

True.

And

I'm not going to go down a Giants ramp, but they draft well.

I think their draft class is pretty.

They're nasty.

Like, no, I'm just like,

Tyrone Tracy to me is a bit of a

fantastical creation.

Like, I think the pass rush is really.

Mark, what happened in the interim when we taped the bulk of the show?

Tyrone Tracy.

Tyrone Tracy is like 200-plus yards over the last two weeks.

I think he's taken over their running back position, number one.

And their pass rush.

Mark, he averaged under three yards of carry tonight.

I know, but he's a college-wide receiver that turned into a running back, and like he's used very well out of the backfield as a receiver.

And you can go look at what he did tonight on that front.

But their pass rush, there's just something about the Giants for him.

Don't blow all this up in two months.

I know we're going to, but it's just like something about it feels

like you're building something that feels like the New York Giants to me.

But

I know they'll probably just

wipe it away.

I like the Giants.

That's my childhood team.

All right.

Outside of the Browns.

I'm saying we sat in the same, you know, like we lived like not, you know, all of us lived close to each other.

So it's like the Giants to me are a team that I think I can see it with their draft class.

And I know I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I think they're just, there's a toughness to them.

And it's not documented tonight because they lost.

I get it.

justin how

you doing

what's up just trying to wrap up the pod so i can get the edit out so we can get the pod up for the people all right good let's do that bangle 17 giant seven uh we will be back uh monday night uh with the monday night recap and news rundown and then as you know the whole cycle begins again so make sure you check that out uh but that is it for today.

We hope we gave you the content you wanted.

And if we didn't, we're just going to try again.

We're like the New York Giants.

Just try hard.

Just win and work hard.

Is that the game we waited all day for?

Like, that's the one.

Well, that's the point.

That's what they tell us.

And they're right.

That's the deep state.

Yes, absolutely.

All right.

Until next time, heed the call.

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