NFL Week 1 Recap!

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The Heed the Co podcast

plants its flag on Sunday nights.

They tried to silence us.

They tried to separate us.

They tried to end this, but they failed.

The flagship show endures.

The flagship show is reborn.

And on this Sunday and every subsequent Sunday until February, we will cover every NFL game played on Terra Firma.

And on this journey with me, Mark Sessler.

Heed the call, baby.

There is no way.

you take away flagship anything attached to this show and what we've done with our entire careers.

We've been doing this for

well over a decade, and there's no feeling quite like the one I experienced on, especially the week one when you've been away from games and like a bunch of games going on.

When you're listening to two or three games at the same time in both ears, taking notes, taking observations, getting ready to come on the show and try to cobble together not only insight, but love for the game.

And it's okay if all our teams that we like lose or get totally scattered.

We're still here, Dan.

Embarrassed, even?

Yeah.

Embarrassed.

There it is.

It's that mix of panic, excitement, and dread wrapped into

a big ball that is the Mark Sessler's Sunday experience.

So Mark's back.

But we can't do this alone.

Mark and I need every game to be covered on Sundays.

So joining us are two more men.

Let's bring them in.

Of course, the great gravedigger, Justin Graver, and our buddy on twice a week, all throughout the season, Connor.

Are you kidding me?

Flagship show.

Is everybody ready?

Let's go.

Come on.

Justin, are you okay?

Because I learned, you know, kind of an important show for us.

And I learned that you're on day three of a juice cleanse and you're talking about having potential brain fog.

Not always what you want to hear from your producer 12 seconds before we hit record.

Day four.

Yeah, I haven't eaten any food since Wednesday.

but, you know, it's fine.

Football is great.

I love being emotionally detached from the Titans, so today didn't even get me down, and I'm ready for an awesome show.

Let's do it.

Can I tell you something, Justin?

This is the 14th year, Justin, that we've done this podcast.

My team has never been in the playoffs in any of those 14 years.

Disappointment and being able to carry on in spite of your team's failures and, you know, embarrassing displays of quarterbacking, we'll get to it.

That's part of the operation as well.

And I know you're ready for this, Justin, and you're going to prove it to us and the world.

Yes, I feel ready.

I feel great.

I'm ready to analyze stuff from a totally objective point of view.

Even the Titans-Bears game, like

I'm happy.

All right, good.

Justin, you seem to be in a moderately good headspace for this.

And Connor, we're going to go through every game, okay?

So are you ready?

I'm ready.

This is, I was actually thinking back to my last time on a flagship show with you guys, and you used to call me on Sunday nights, and I used to be at my friend Jeff's apartment, and I would take the call in like a corridor after like having three beers and watching Sunday night football.

And so this is,

I'm much more prepared, I feel like, this time than last time.

I'm ready.

Excellent.

All four of us closely watched three games each to cover the 12 games on the schedule.

So let's get into it and let us start

this rundown by heading to the heartland, Indianapolis, Indiana, where two division foes gave us a sneak preview of what could be a very fun season-long game of cat and mouse.

Let's get to it, Gravedigger.

Because you know who the Houston Texans could have used last year?

A Joe Mixon type.

And you know who they have this year?

Literally Joe Mixon.

The former Bengal went off in his Houston debut, rushing for 159 yards and a touchdown.

His 30th carry, a clinching first-down run behind an offensive line that kicked ass

for four straight quarters.

Anthony Richardson kept the Colts in the mix with a multitude of splash plays, but it wasn't enough to secure the win.

Final score, Texans 29, Colts 27.

And man, the AFC South has a chance to be a lot of fun this year.

Boys,

I really enjoyed this game.

It really lived up to the hype.

I took it with the second overall pick in our draft that we did yesterday.

And there was something

so exciting watching this Texans offense that we thought about it in our heads all through the summer what it could be with Stefan Diggs now there.

And Mixon, who is, while, you know, I almost say that a little bit in just because I think there was a, you know, it's fair to say that had Mixon already played his best football.

But in this, in this game, he really never looked better.

And it helped Connor that he was running behind a line that was opening up gaping holes for him.

There were so many plays in this game, Connor, where he's not even touched after, you know, three, four, five yards, and he's getting to the second level.

So if you give this Houston Texans

team with C.J.

Stroud a running game like this,

there's no telling where they end up.

And I think that's why

there was some credible rumors about them being interested in Saquon Barkley this offseason.

You knew kind of what direction they wanted to go in.

And when you get into the later years of this offense, one thing that's really interesting is they start designing a lot of the run blocking to make everything not only better, you know, but easier for all your offensive linemen.

So it's actually putting them in better positions on a down-to-down basis.

And then you start creating those 49ers-esque, massive gaps that you're seeing these running backs run through.

Now you have a guy who can actually hit those gaps, too.

It's exciting, right?

You know, what could Stroud turn into if this offense evolves just like it did in San Francisco?

I mean, also, Bobby Sloick a year ago did a lot with that offensive line when there were injuries, when they were undermanned.

I thought that was quietly one of his best achievements beyond really calling a great game, and we didn't know if he could do that.

So this is a a Shanahan-esque offense.

It's got roots in that.

And this was the missing element a year ago.

A, a healthy line, but B, the idea that Mixon can come in.

And, you know, the last couple of years, I always wonder, it was like, okay, you could have gotten Mixon.

You could have gotten Derrick Henry.

You could have gone after Saquon.

You got Mixon, and I haven't been thoroughly impressed with the guy.

At times, there have been injuries.

He's not been fully healthy.

But the version that I saw today, you know, watching portions of their drives, it's like, Dan, this is pretty wild.

I mean, it's such a a help for C.J.

Stroud, too, to have this support.

He didn't have this a year ago and he thrived.

Yeah, there was

to the point of the line blowing out just huge holes.

Late in the game, Mixon was averaging more than four yards before contact per rush, and the Colts allow 5.3 rushing yards per carry in this game.

That was,

you know, that was a strong suit last year.

It was 4.1 per game last year.

So that's something they obviously have to get fixed right away.

And the only reason they end up hanging in this game is that Anthony Richardson is making just crazy plays.

He had

three 50-plus yard completions in this game, Richardson, including a absolutely gorgeous

arching spiral where he's under pressure and kind of even he loses his footing, his back foot, and he regains it and then drops a absolute dime into Alec Pierce's hands for a touchdown.

And he wasn't overly, he wasn't perfect by any stretch in this game, Richardson, and his stat line backs that up.

But the explosiveness and what makes him so interesting, Justin, it's all there.

He had nine completions in this game, nine for 212 yards, two touchdowns, and also had a rushing touchdown as well in this game.

So he is that you're still seeing he's playing fairly recklessly, but he's also built, you would think, potentially to play this way.

It didn't work out last year, but you don't want to see him playing soft, and he did not play soft in this game, and he kept them in it, even if he was imperfect at times.

The pass to Alec Piercy you're talking about went 65.3 yards in the air, the third longest completion in the next-gen stats era, which goes back to 2016.

And like you said, he didn't even really step into that throw.

He was like falling away with guys hanging off of it.

I have no idea how he was able to launch that ball with such power and accuracy.

And then the touchdown run that really was like just to keep Indy connected to the game on a fourth down from near the goal line where he powers his way through what felt like the entire Texans defense.

I mean, the electric plays, like the tantalizing upside flashes every time he takes the field.

If he can stay healthy, you wonder if the inconsistency can turn into consistency because he also threw a really bad interception where he was just way high over his intended receiver.

He got picked off by a safety and i i think some of that stuff like the touch throws over the middle of the field is where he's still struggling and i heard an interesting theory on anthony richardson that because he's so yoked he's so jacked that he literally like can't compress his elbow enough to like feather a throw over the middle of the field.

And I wonder if that's something he just really needs to work on.

Connor deals with that now.

So now that he's like dedicated his body, there's no more like three beers and watching football with or so he gets that.

That was like Brady.

So I just

yeah, so I just wonder if like if he can put it all together, it's clear the upside, but can he do that and how quickly can that come together for Indy this season?

Yeah, and I want to give credit to D'Amico Ryans.

And,

you know, this guy has done such a good job in a short amount of time turning the Texans, and it helps to obviously have a franchise quarterback on your side.

But there's a moment in this game where

you had a decision to make.

You're up 22 to 20, and it's fourth down and goal at the Indianapolis two.

You could kick the field goal,

which probably is the safe play, and it puts you up, obviously, more than a field goal, but less than a touchdown, and then you're holding on for dear life.

But instead, he put his faith in the offense, and they draw up a great play that keeps the takes the Colts and puts them flat-footed.

It's a two-yard touchdown pass to Stefan Diggs, another arrival there.

He had two touchdowns in this game, and that is the play that essentially sealed the win.

So you see the way,

and then the way the game ends is with, again,

this new running back, Joe Mixon, behind this offensive line on third and short, and they just blow through another hole for the clinching first down.

So I would imagine, Connor, if you're D'Amico Ryans, you're sleeping very well tonight because you kind of pushed all the right buttons and and you have absolutely established something that they were hoping Damian Pierce would be for them last year,

a real dog in the backfield to balance things out.

And he gave Joe Mixon the most carries he's ever had in his career in this game.

So that gives you a little idea of what they want to do with this offense.

I mean, any defensive-minded head coach, this is a dream come true.

You're controlling the clock, and you're doing it against, you know, your chief competition in the division and one of the best play callers you're going to face all year on the other side of the ball.

So you're able to keep the ball away from Shane Steichen, which I think a lot of teams would like to do.

All right, let's move on.

Great start, great game.

I was very happy with that as a second overall pick.

I thought maybe Sestog, he had the first overall pick.

He said, he reached a little bit, I thought, with Dallas at Cleveland, but maybe he'll get a gem.

Mark, take it away.

A gem, it was not.

Bye-bye, weird offseason.

Dallas looked tried and true in a fiery, life-squeezing win over the lustily booed at home.

Cleveland Browns, give me a break.

This was about Dallas' stars showing up in full.

Dak Prescott hurling beauty darts just hours after becoming the highest paid quarterback in football.

CeeDee Lamb, Dan called this ages ago, exposing Cleveland early and looking like an absolute star, Pro Football's best wide receiver.

Brandon Aubrey telling Justin Tucker, step aside.

Devontae Turbin slicing out Cleveland's heart with an electric punt return.

But it was Micah Parsons who cracked this Browns Browns team like an egg right away, leading a defense of piled up six sacks, 16 QB hits, two picks, a forced fumble.

Cleveland's offense looked disorganized, minus a plan, and overwhelmed.

54 yards at half and 39 yards in penalties, lifeless from there.

The Browns were minus two starting tackles and it's week one, I get it, but Deshaun Watson on his own remains as lost at sea as he does found.

Not even half of today's Baker Mayfield was this performance by Deshaun.

And I'm telling you right now, heavy drinking in the flats tonight after Dallas bashes Cleveland 33 to 17.

This was an embarrassing opener for the Cleveland Browns.

They looked five minutes in like they knew this was over and they had no plan to punch Dallas back in the mouth.

Embarrassing.

Yeah, I had this on the second screen for the late games and

you know, I wanted to obviously you want to see Cleveland and you want to see what Dallas looks like after a whole summer of storylines about how Dallas isn't any good anymore or whatever.

And this is the Tom Brady game, and maybe we'll get to that a little bit.

But yeah, the thing that jumped out to me, obviously, the Cowboys look great, and

this is the Mike Zimmer get off my lawn game.

He absolutely cranky old man,

wanted nothing to do with the Browns stealing his thunder in his first game as the DC of the Cowboys.

And I was just struck, Connor, by how

Watson, and again, I think we all know what's going on at this point with Deshaun Watson, that they're in a bad spot and he's not showing a lot of growth.

But every time a new season begins, you think, okay, maybe he could turn the page and start looking more like the Texans guy.

This offense, it's like, how many throws into the flat?

How many short slants over the middle behind the wide receiver?

How many

panicked scrambles out of the pocket?

And then he tries to get some daylight and gets dragged down from behind.

He just seems like a totally different player.

I think it's multiple factors, but you're right, right?

He did not hit a single throw over five yards downfield in the entire first half.

And it's only when he starts to kind of, you'll see this at the end of games when the Browns are getting blown out, where he starts to create and he starts to get comfortable and he actually starts to push the ball down the field.

And I think what happens at that point is it...

it negates the kind of defenses that he doesn't seem to be able to read or doesn't seem to be able to react to.

We forget that defensive football changed completely since he left the NFL and basically took two years of non-existence and then returned.

And so I really do think that a lot of this is indicative of him struggling to adjust to this new game.

And for whatever reason, the Browns not building in this kind of harmonious run game for him to be able to, like Josh Allen or Cam Newton, create some separation for his wide receivers and get him these easy throws.

They are, they were missing both tackles.

And I think that, you know, when we just project this line to be successful, well, that's 40% of what you were.

And they're missing Nick Chubb.

And so your identity has been stripped from you.

But

I'm with you in the sense that, like, this feels like the second or third time that we've heard about Stofansky and fill in the blank, offensive coordinator, like retooling the offense to fit Deshaun Watson.

When the offense has worked, they put up a number basically saying, here's what the Browns have done with Deshaun Watson.

And here's what they've done with everyone they considered a deep backup in terms of pay and position.

And it is, they're more successful when he's not on the field.

And it's just like,

there was all the environment around him.

But Deshaun Watson on his own looked cowed and like he didn't know what to do in certain plays.

There was a couple of sparkling plays, but that's like five out of like 25 drop backs.

And it's like they look lost with him in there.

And I think it's like, can you fix this?

Or do you need to make a bigger fix?

And a perfect, a perfect start on the Cowboys side.

In every way, the defense was smothering.

Micah Parsons, Demarcus Lawrence, Eric Kendricks all had sacks.

Kendricks also had his first interception since 2016.

They got also Trayvon Diggs.

He's back in action after the ACL injury.

He has an interception late in this game.

You get a punt return for a touchdown from Cavante Turban.

You get a clean game from Dak Prescott, who, by the way, signed a massive contract extension right before kickoff that made him the highest paid player in the league.

You have CD Lamb coming off his own holdout, as Mark said at the top, kind of hitting the ground running,

especially early in the game, establishing things for the Cowboys, doing some things with three different jet sweeps for 25 yards.

And you put it all together, and I feel like, Justin, this is the Cowboys team.

And listen, the Cowboys have a lot to prove, and it's not going to be in September.

It's always going to be in January.

But we're coming off of somewhere where there was just a lot of talk about the Cowboys didn't really get better, and they kind of took a step back.

But for one game, at least to go into Cleveland, it's not an easy place to play to go into Cleveland and push around the Browns the way they did, even if it's an undermanned Browns team.

So that is an A-plus start, I thought, for Mike McCarthy.

Yeah, absolutely.

I felt like every time I looked up at the screen, Brandon Aubrey was kicking through a field goal.

I didn't catch a ton of this game, but the fact that the Browns defense struggled as much as it did, I know the Cowboys' offense has been elite, and Dak Prescott was in full control of this game and is elite, and his numbers weren't super eye-popping, but he didn't make any mistakes.

He made a lot of great throws

every time I saw it on red zone.

And

I wonder if Bill Callahan leaving the Browns' offensive line, or if it's just the tackles being out, or if it's just Micah Parsons is a beast,

or all three of those factors combining together to create the mess that we saw for Cleveland today.

It's fair.

It's early, but that's fair.

And

you mentioned Brandon Aubrey, so let's take a quick trip.

A quick trip.

Sure.

Because we got a lot to get to.

But my goodness, this is the first time since we've done this podcast.

Or really, you know, I guess, when did Justin Tucker come into the league?

Right around the time the podcast started.

Where I'm starting to think, is there actual competition for who the best kicker in the NFL is?

Aubrey went off in this game, four for four.

multiple 50-yard kicks, long of 57.

He hit a 66-yarder in this game that was waived off by an illegal procedure or a delay of game of some kind.

Delay.

Delay of game, which was a bummer because he hit the net with the 66 yarder, which would have tied Justin Tucker's all-time record.

They have him lined up to go for a 71-yarder.

And then they chicken out.

And you know, I love Mike McCarthy, but give that dog a chance.

He just split the uprights from 66.

But that's who we're dealing with now.

The fact that a head coach would even think, and Bones,

the special teams coordinator, would even think, should we try this?

Should we try a 71-yarder?

Tells you that they are dealing with a weapon that's a difference maker.

And yes, I'm not, I'm not ready to say, Connor, that I think the best kicker in the league now is in Dallas, not Baltimore.

But that was, you want to throw down the gauntlet and say that it's now a conversation?

Okay,

gotcha, baby.

And if anybody's going to have the best kicker, it's going to be Bones Fossil, right?

You know,

because there's a suite, it's, it's, it's leather, there's a lot of leather, there's a lot of plush, there's the, the idiot,

idiots rolling in with the giant magnum bottles and the sprinkle,

what do they call those things?

The sparklers.

Like, that's Justin's area.

But I think Brandon might want a piece of it.

I'm just saying.

Justin Tucker, one of the few kickers in the NFL with his own

coach.

Like, many kickers don't have kicker coaches.

And now Brandon Aubrey is saying, shove it.

I don't need one of those guys.

Oh, juicy.

He's from my hometown of Plano, Texas.

I played soccer when I was eight years old with his older brother.

I bet his brother could kick the shit out of the ball, too.

The crazy thing about Brandon Aubrey being one of, if not the best kicker in the NFL, is like he was a soccer player who the Cowboys were like, yeah, let's just see if he can kick field goals.

And he's unbelievable at it.

It's crazy.

I'm paying an outrageous amount of money for my son, Jack, to be on a club soccer team.

I'm just going to send him out to the high school field and have him attempt a thousand field goals a day until he hates me.

That's my new plan for

Fatherhood Corner there.

Let's move on to our next game.

It went down.

It was the game, if you're in a survivor pool, for instance, this was the game that might have ruined your life

because the Patriots and Bengals did battle, and things went a little differently than perhaps we all assumed.

Justin, take it away.

No, Bill Belichick, no problem for the Patriots defense.

Many people were wondering where the pressure would come from.

Christian Barmore, he's out, he's on the NIL list or whatever list he's on.

Matthew Judon just traded away, but Keon White stepped up in a major way, two and a half sacks and four pressures.

And honestly, Joe Burrow looked pretty rusty in his return to action.

He was under duress for most of this game.

Two costly fumbles sank any hopes that the Bengals had of making a comeback, led to six points off of those turnovers, which proved to be the difference in this game.

I will say Jacoby Brissette managed the game really well, but it was Ramondre Stevenson who stole the show 120 yards on 25 carries, including a nine-yard run with only two minutes to play to seal the 16-10 win.

And Gerard Mayo got the game ball from Robert Kraft in his debut as the head coach.

Yeah,

do we have any sound on that?

We do, actually.

All right, let's listen to a little bit of, and by the way,

I don't recall too many locker room visits that were captured for posterity and put on post-game shows during the Bill Belichick era.

But here is Robert Kraft speaking with the team and his new head coach after a shocking win on opening day.

Every one of you contributed.

I'm so proud of the new players, the new coaches.

People had all the excuses that couldn't happen, but you all did it.

And I'm spoiled now.

I'm going to count on a lot more, though.

Most importantly, we're giving you this conference.

Yeah, so good for Gerard Mayo.

Good for the Patriots.

Let's be real.

Like, nobody.

I remember on the Thursday show, Connor, just talking about, I don't even know when their first win comes when you look at their schedule because it's not a soft schedule for a team that seems to be outmanned.

But

they took advantage of the fact that the Cincinnati Bengals stink in the beginning of September.

This is just a thing now.

It is a thing.

I picked the Bengals to lose to the Patriots when I predicted all 272 games a couple weeks ago.

But then

my wife is in like a high-stakes survivor pool, and I was like, obviously take the Bengals.

And then she came back today and she's like, what the hell?

And I was like, yeah, I know.

I picked the Patriots to win.

So that was not like, it's not going well.

It's not the full version of their team right now.

You know, you've got Jamar Chase is just back, T.

Higgins not around.

But this is a lingering situation with Cincinnati.

Like last year, they went out in week one and got totally waxed by Cleveland.

Looked nothing like what we thought they'd look like.

And in this case, it's like to be dominated by a team that we've spent six months saying had absolutely zero talent on offense and a disheveled offensive line.

They ran the ball really well.

And I think part of it is like, what does stick around from after like this week?

Like the Bengals don't have...

Because they've been an upstart team,

it's easy to think that they've got all this talent on defense, but that's just not the case right now.

They were ran on last year, and they got ran on today, and that has been a problem for that unit going on for a long time.

It unspooled them a year ago, and it's like, this happened here?

And I'm not sure if you could have come up.

I don't know who, if someone from Pittsburgh is writing the script to week one, because all of Ohio completely melted.

But this is an even more embarrassing loss because you didn't lose to the Dallas Cowboys.

I know Ramondre Stevenson had a good game, and he's an underrated running back.

I think he's really good and doesn't get enough credit, but they still only gave up 16 points, Justin.

Like, since then, the whole idea why I thought that they were going to be okay this year, the Jamar Chase thing was a legitimate distraction, and then he came down with food poisoning apparently over the weekend to compound matters.

But the idea that Joe Burrow was going to get a full training camp and kind of be in the mix after injuries had kind of made that impossible the last couple of years.

And yet, what did we see here?

I read one stat that

Burrow, 16, according to ESPN stats and information, 16 of his first 20 pass attempts were within five yards of the line of scrimmage.

That is not the fun Joe Burrow that we all fell in love with.

Yeah, it was really weird.

I mean, he was under pressure a lot early in this game, and then the Patriots defense kind of stopped getting to him,

but it was already getting to him mentally, if you understand what I mean.

Like, he was starting to feel pressure that wasn't there.

And after like a second and a half to two seconds in the pocket, if he looked for his first read and it wasn't there, he was just dumping it down and checking it down.

And Jamar Chase, who, you know, there's all this talk that he was going to be on a limited snap count.

Would he even play without a new contract?

You mentioned the illness he came down with.

He ended up playing 40 out of 48 snaps.

So it wasn't like Jamar Chase wasn't on the field, but, you know, he hasn't practiced all summer.

And

there may be, I mean, those two guys go all the way back to LSU.

So I thought they don't need to practice this summer.

They can just hit the field and play.

But Burrow, I mean, Burrow was really, I said it, but he was really rusty in this game.

He finished with 164 yards on 29 attempts, took three sacks, no touchdowns.

And I just think that really like the pressure getting to him early affected him for pretty much the whole game.

And then the pressure came back late and Keon White got his, it was his third sack, but it was carded a second and a half sack that sort of ended things.

There was a big turning point in this game, though.

It was in the first half.

The Bengals offense struggled out of the gate.

They finally put a drive together.

They go all all the way down the field.

Burrow throws a unbelievable, just like high-point ball to the back corner of the end zone, looking for Mike Gosecki, who goes up and makes an incredible catch.

Touchdown Bengals.

It's like, all right, everything's going to be okay.

The Bengals are going to be on check and they're going to win this game.

Hold up.

Review.

Actually, Gosecki did not complete the process of the catch.

Overturned, brings up third down.

And on the very next play, Tanner Hudson catches a ball running across the middle and he's like running into the end zone and Kyle Duggar comes in and knocks the ball out and it's like fumbled all around and the Patriots jump on it and they go down and get a field goal out of that.

So that's like a 10-point swing essentially that the Goseki thing was overturned.

And then they muff the Bengals muff a punt later in the game.

The Patriots jump on it, kick a field goal.

There's three more points.

You lose a game by six points and your two turnovers basically gave the other team those six points and took points off the board for yourself.

I mean, they were at the goal line when Tanner Hudson fumbled.

But I don't want this to come off like, oh, this is one of those fluky games where the worst team wins because they force more turnovers.

Like, yeah, the turnovers were very impactful.

But the Patriots also dominated this game pretty much from the jump.

I mean, yeah, they only scored 16 points.

It was a 16-10 game.

But when it comes to just like

the

flow of the game and like winning in the trenches, they out-possessed Cincinnati by over eight minutes.

They ran three different drives of at least 12 plays.

Like that defense just couldn't get off the field and they stopped them most of the time.

They got to the red zone, and that's why New England's score was so low.

But, like, it really wasn't just some fluky turnover-induced win for New England.

It was like,

we're better than you, and we're going to beat you.

And guess what?

Now, because you didn't take care of business against the team that everyone thought was going to be in the draft lottery come next spring, you get to go to Arrowhead next Sunday.

And that's going to all of a sudden be like a major gut check for the Bengals.

So, good on Gerard Mayo and the Pats, and the Bengals are already in crisis.

Let's head to Orchard Park.

The Bills are over,

the Bills have their chance.

I'm actually talking like Buffalo Bill from Silence and Williams.

The Bills don't have the dogs, but the lotion in the basket.

She's a great big fat person.

Please.

The football Cagna Scenti

Spent so much of the summer talking about the lack of dogs in Buffalo that we all overlooked the pit bull that remains off the leash in western New York.

Josh Allen is a frigging animal.

The superstar QB put the Bills on his back with four total touchdowns, two on the ground, two through the air, 34-28 win for the Bills over a very game Arizona Cardinals team in Buffalo.

The Bills wiped out a 17-3 deficit with three consecutive touchdowns wrapped around halftime.

And

it was a game that started about as poorly as possible.

Down 17-3, as I said, with the Cardinals doing what they want.

On offense, Kyler Murray looked great early on in this game,

moving really well, showing no signs of any issues.

Obviously, now he's that full year removed from the rehab of the injury, and he looks like he's going to be a player.

And the problem for Arizona, though, is once Allen did what Allen does, which

he's kind of one of those guys.

There's a very short list of players that you could just tell when he decides, okay, I'm taking this game over.

And when he does that, he can will his team to greater places.

So, Connor, while I saw a team that maybe doesn't have all of the weapons around him to make life easy, I also see a team that is going to still win a lot of games because, yeah, in a quarterback league, they have one of the three or four best there is.

I think they will win games as long as Josh Allen stays healthy, right?

And that was always the source of consternation.

Like when Ken Dorsey was there last year, they wanted to limit the carries and then force Josh to start to take over in different ways.

But what happened around the middle point of last year, like right before Ken Dorsey got fired, it was really interesting.

Teams started like using some of their faster, like even like defensive tackles to try to spy him as if they were like linebackers.

And that's when you start getting those compounding hits that impact him later on in the game.

So I'm dying to know what happens because it's great.

Whenever he can carry the ball seven, eight, nine, ten times a game, it changes everything.

But how long can he do that safely?

Because we do see kind of diminishing returns at some point.

Connor, here's the problem.

He's already hurt.

And

he had a heroic touchdown run where as he's coming down, he kind of lands and pins his own arm slash wrist slash hand with the football under there.

And he needs to get wrapped up on the sideline.

And after the game, there were comments both from McDermott and Allen that made me pause a little bit because I just assume he's such an Iron Man, he's going to be fine.

But they kind of left the door open that they kind of got to get a better idea.

Here's a little bit from Josh Allen about the injury.

Just kind of, again, split-second situations.

The first one, the first rushing touchdown, I kind of lowered the shoulder,

knowing that was a corner.

The second time I knew it was Buddha, and Buddha's

a good player, and he'll lay the boom on you, so I decided to go up and over, but, you know, probably can't make a living doing that.

But here we are.

Yeah, so Mark, that's a guy that will always sell out for his team.

But what Connor's saying is right, too.

I mean, if this is what he in his mind has decided that I always have to do that, especially this year and with the sense of urgency around the Bills after years of almost getting there, you do worry about his ability to stay on the field.

Yeah, because for the past couple of years, there were just simply more proven weapons around him, and the defense had more proven veterans that they could lean on.

And

I think part of the story of this game, this almost became as meaty of an upset as the game we just talked about, because Arizona comes out against this Bills defense, Sean McDermott's defense, 13 plays, 60-yard touchdown, 10-place, 60-yard field goal drive, 13-place, 71-yard touchdown drive.

All of those together ate up about 20 minutes of the first half.

I mean, it was a pretty dominant first half.

Then you get Josh Allen doing what he's doing, and like, that's fine.

But, like, I think there's a roadmap here where, and it's not trying me, I know that the Cardinals have a bit of a pet team for me, but the way that James Conner ran the ball against them, the way that they kind of smothered the clock, and just like you get that version of Kyler Murray, it put Buffalo into a tough spot.

So I just don't know against some of the better teams in the league if Josh Allen alone, and it's not just him alone, but like they're waiting for some people to develop on offense.

And this got a little scarier than you'd think a team from Arizona traveling to the East Coast for an early game on the East Coast, a team that was

a losing team a year ago by many, many stretches, like came in and put this kind of a threat on Buffalo.

Like, I'm not sleeping super soundly in Western New York tonight.

I might wake up a few times in the night slightly concerned with what I witnessed.

Yeah, I think that that's fair.

That's certainly fair that there's a lot to work on here.

And his hand, by the way, was heavily wrapped.

It was reported afterwards that Allen's hand was heavily wrapped as he left the building.

But the way they took control of the game, he had finished with four touchdowns, two rushing, two throwing.

And if not for a DJ Dallas kickoff return,

the first one under the new, quote, dynamic kickoff rules, this game would never have felt as close as it did.

And it was close at the very end.

Kyler Murray and the Cardinals offense got a couple chances in the fourth quarter to try to to take this game back.

But then, to Buffalo's credit, they did stiffen up and get the stops they needed.

And Justin, by the way, one of your fearless predictions or your fearless prediction this week, a classic rookie mistake.

If you just would have said there will be a kickoff return for a touchdown with a new dynamic kickoff rule, you would have had it.

But you said it had to be an opening kickoff, and you got a little bit too specific, and it cost you a big spot.

So just all around a tough Sunday for the Gravedigger.

I really marked up that prediction by just getting too specific with it.

And now here I am going to be 0-1 in our predictions contest, but that's okay.

Dan, I have a question about this game.

Marvin Harrison, one catch for four yards.

What happened?

Yeah, it was he had a pretty bad drop early in the game and

was, yeah, very quiet.

And the Cardinals offense really lost its way.

They're up 17-3 with, I think, like...

less than two minutes to go in the second quarter.

And over the next 21 minutes of game time, they just didn't didn't do anything while the Bills just took control.

And even when the Cardinals did get back in the scoring column, it was the kickoff return that did it.

So the offense really puttered out down the stretch.

So I guess, you know, chalk it up to rookie jitters, and there's some work to be done in terms of that connection.

But he was obviously very quiet in this game.

And I just want to get before we move here and take our first break, a shout out to Greg Rousseau.

The Bills need somebody to step up in that that front seven.

He had three sacks in this game, including a strip sack.

And it's a big year for Russo.

It's his fourth year at the team, and they kind of need him to make the leap.

And he finished with six pressures.

The team combined for eight.

So he anchored the defense and was a major reason why they were able to get things under control.

And one quick note, not to leave Grave Deader on a cliff here.

Like my fearless prediction was that Arizona would topple Buffalo.

And, you know, midway through this game, that's probably why I'm spirited about this.

Like, I was feeling very good about this.

It felt prophetic from a mountaintop, and it just started to crumble, you know, bit by bit.

And so, enough with these predictions, with these specific, you know, granular predictions.

I'm going to start to go very generalist and start to pile up some wins.

All right.

Well, that's, see, there's always goals to shoot for.

Let's take a break and we'll roll on with the flagship program.

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Heed the Call with Mark Sessler and Dan Hansis is on Underdog.

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All right, we are back.

Week one flagship show.

We move on to a battle for the soul of Florida.

Mark Zessler.

Tyreek Hill

started the day cuffed by the heat outside Hard Rock due to a driving infraction, but he was vertical hours later, helping Miami out of a 14-0 hole with a sizzling 18-yard scoring grab.

and 130 yards on the day.

The Dolphins were asleep early in general, but they awoke to topple the Jaguars in a comeback special.

Miami couldn't run the ball out of the gate.

Tua was pent up early.

Two drives fizzled on fourth down in the first half, but Hill and Waddle both wound up with 100-plus.

It looked a lot like last year by the end.

And the Dolphins' defense led by Emmanuel Agba and also Javon Holland.

The latter, with Jacksonville trying to end the game, who caused a killer Travis Etienne fumble that triggered Tyreek's touchdown on the next play and put the clamps on Trevor Lawrence late.

The Dolphins 20-17 in a comeback special.

And honestly, more questions, Dan, about the Jaguars closing games.

They had this thing.

They had this thing.

And Travis Etienne is a very reliable running back in general.

Didn't fumble all last year, I believe.

This fumble was one of the killer turnovers of the entire day and let the Dolphins right back in.

Yeah, I

said on Thursday, I just never pick against the Dolphins at home in September.

But

as I was seeing the score bug or the scroll underneath while the other games are going on, I was like, oh, maybe, you know, the Tyreek drama.

And I saw Jalen Waddell went out of the game at one point and was being tested for a concussion.

And maybe it just wasn't their day.

But the thing about that team, when it's going right, Connor, is they're always just one big splash play away from getting things figured out.

In this game, you had a Devon A.

Chain catch and run for, I believe, 50 that kind of got the offense moving a little bit.

And then Waddle made some plays and started getting hot.

And then the big one is the Tyreek.

It's always, it feels like it's not a matter of if, it's when.

And he goes for 80 and a touch and order gets restored.

It's a tough team, especially this time of year.

Yeah, and that's sort of the, that's the one side of the coin, right?

That a defense can never be at ease against this team from September through like the middle of November.

And then all of a sudden everything kind of changes and the dynamics change.

But defensively as a coordinator, there's just no real consistent way to approach this, even though they did do a really good job, I think, at the beginning of the game, too.

How about this offensive line, Mark,

for the Jags?

Because we're coming off a year where, like, Trevor Lawrence was trying to play through injury.

He probably should have shut it down before he did because he obviously was not playing well.

And in this game, you have the Dolphins consistently

getting in his face

when the Jags had a chance, apparently, to

a game-winning drive, they give up back-to-back sacks, and you're just going to end up getting this guy hurt again.

10 quarterback pressures, according to Next Gen Stats.

It really came late.

The Agba sack ended a major attempt there.

Jalen Phillips, who looked great, came in and did the same thing soon after.

And it was really, you're watching the Jaguars.

I think that ETN fumble,

it seemed to break their spirit because

had he rolled in and scored and they were close, like that game's over.

I think you would have put the Dolphins into a blender emotionally because they really weren't themselves, but that brought them back entirely.

And to me, I mean, they ran the ball pretty well, Jacksonville.

So that part of their line...

like with tanks Bigsby had a big roll today.

I don't worry about it from a run angle so much from what I saw.

But yeah,

like Trevor Lawrence, if he's dinged up, it's like with Josh Allen, that team is a completely different situation.

But he looked good for portions of this game.

I just think they played a lot more in the preseason than other teams, and they looked like it early on.

But then Miami's like, well, our preseason was the first half.

Now here comes our real season.

I would not to discount, guys, the fact that like, and you saw it last year with Brandon Staley and the Chargers, where every prospective head coach wanted that job, and it does impact the way that you do things.

Every coach who is up for a job or who's about to be up for a job wants that Jaguars job.

And I think that there's something to that.

And I would watch the way that Doug Peterson, all these guys, Press Taylor, they respond to this because it's a very real thing that, you know, maybe you start making some decisions that you wouldn't.

Maybe you're trying to do things that you wouldn't.

I think there's a lot of pressure on this gig that not a lot of people are talking about.

Mark, to your point, per ESBN analytics, the Jaguars had a 92% chance of winning the game before Etienne fumbled the ball, which immediately preceded the Tyreek 80-yard touchdown pass.

So that's how you lose football games.

Speaking of Tyreek Hill, let's hear from Hill.

One of the strangest things I've ever seen is when the video starts getting out there in social media that

Hill out of his car, laying on the pavement, cuffed with these cops standing all around him.

And

as fans are filtering into the stadium to watch Tyreek Hill play.

And one thing that really jumped, well, let me hear from Tyreek Hill, and And then I want to add one more kind of addendum to this that really tells me like how things really seem to get out of control to the point where one of these police officers involved reportedly has already been put on administrative leave.

Here's Tyreek Hill.

They said I was speeding, but I don't, they said I was speeding.

Reckless drive or whatever.

So I wasn't raised like that.

The name drop of Flash.

You feel me?

Like.

If you say I did something, write me a ticket because I'm a normal person too.

You say I did something, write me a ticket.

Do whatever you got to do.

You feel me?

But I'm just saying, like, don't be disrespectful.

You feel me?

Ridiculous.

And Florio reported on Football Night in America before the SNF kickoff that Claus Campbell, former Walter Payton man of the year.

And

I don't know if you guys have gotten a chance to meet Campbell, but I remember meeting him at an all-or-nothing premiere with Jason Zumwalt in downtown LA when he was with the Cardinals.

And legitimately,

largest human to nicest guy ratio.

It doesn't exist.

Like, he's universally loved and respected, is seen as a good dude.

And he was detained and handcuffed himself for interfering with a police investigation.

So, just a wild scene that I think is going to have some reverberations down there in Miami-Dade.

Let's move.

To the meadowlands, where Sam Darnold was not seeing ghosts, but delivering ghosts to the New York Giants.

Single, jobless white men aged 30 and up rejoice.

New York's talk radio will be a binge fest of Schadenfreude as you get to loudly proclaim to all you know, a cat and your mother/slash roommate, that you were correct about Daniel Jones not being the guy in New York.

Jones struggled mightily in a 28-6 beatdown at the hands of the Minnesota Vikings.

He was 22 of 42 for 186 yards and two interceptions, including a pick six backed up against his own goal line.

He was sacked five times.

The Giants were seven of 18 on third down, and Brian Dable refused to go for a fourth and manageable while down 22 points, cementing his lack of confidence.

In his offense, meanwhile, the Minnesota Vikings looked efficient offensively.

Sam Darnold did not throw an incomplete pass until almost halftime.

Brian Flores dialed up a banger of the defensive game plan.

The Giants were held to 3.5 yards per carry, and only rookie Malik Neighbors surpassed 60 yards receiving.

Boys, the call for Tommy Cutlitz begins now.

Oh, my God.

Or Drew Locke.

Let's start with the Vikings here, Connor, because

I'm so happy for Sam.

Like, this was a guy that was

absolutely put through the ringer in that stadium for one of the darkest eras of Jets' history, the Adam Gase era.

Never had a chance, and that's all I've ever thought with Darnall.

Just give him a chance with

functional some functionality around him.

And I'm not, so I'm not going to put too much into one game.

I think that it's possible the Giants think, and it's just a nice start, but this is exactly the game he needed to get going.

Was Darnold playing at like a super high level, or is he more just hitting passes that most quarterbacks would hit?

Like, how would you rate his game?

I know the stats are great, and obviously, the storyline writes itself, but how would you actually explain his play in this?

I wouldn't put him far away from what Baker Mayfield was accomplishing last year.

Like, I do think he's a what do scouts divide them up into is win because of players and win with players.

I do think he's a win because of potential player.

If you look back at even the deep cuts when he was with the Jet stand, there were some unbelievable throws that were just lost completely in the morass and the narrative of kind of everything that happened there.

Obviously, having Justin Jefferson helps and having Kevin O'Connell, who I think is probably slowly establishing himself as one of the best play callers in the NFL, all that stuff helps.

And that's a young giant secondary, which was feisty a little bit at the beginning of the game, but

this was a good Sam Darnold game.

Like, I think he's going to set himself up for a nice little contract.

And, Mark, I don't want to hear anybody saying, oh, yeah, Darnold's now only doing well because he has a great coach and a great wide receiver.

It's like, how about we look at it as the scales potentially balancing here?

Because for five years, he had nothing and was just getting his ass kicked and embarrassed.

And now maybe he'll get a chance to get some run again with some people around him that could help make him the player that the Jets thought he would be coming out of USC.

I'm with you.

I mean, it's one game, and

I think that we could look askew at the Giants relatively soon, if not already.

But I guess back to the, because I think it's fair to say Darnold is here, and he was drafted where he was drafted because there's a proven skill set.

He's been in bad environments, but the Kevin O'Connell thing is part of it.

Like, if we're going to talk about every quarterback that goes to San San Francisco and that Kyle Shanahan's the reason that Brock Purdy is mostly someone that would be like selling milk, but like instead he's a NFL quarterback because of Shanahan.

Like, I do think coaching matters.

And like, on that defense, like, Brian Flores matters a lot on that defense.

But Kevin O'Connell and Sam Darnold together, I like the combination for Sam, even if it's not just the coaching.

But it leaves me wondering if you're Brian Dable, because you know the Giants well, Connor.

Like, are you just concerned about the Dable experience at this point?

Or is it just he as a quarterback that no matter where this quarterback went and parts of this offense went, it wouldn't work?

I think this is just another example of like the organization meaning well, but not being able to get out of its own way.

And I think, you know, trying to fall in love with Daniel Jones as hard as they did and putting themselves in a position where this was really the only option.

I mean, they weren't going to, Patriots weren't going to give up Drake May.

The Commanders weren't going to give up Jaden Daniels.

This was kind of it for them.

But I really think Brian Dable did everything he could this offseason to make it work to the point where he was pressuring Daniel Jones on every snap in camp.

I mean, he made it very clear that he was going to pull the rug out from underneath him, I think.

And at some point, I do think that's going to happen.

I mean, I think it has to happen sooner rather than later because I don't think Brian Dable's waiting around.

You know, he knew it took him 27 years to get this head coaching job.

You know, I don't think he's going to wait and

let him get himself get sunk by Daniel Jones.

Yeah.

And the only thing uglier than the uniforms that the Giants are wearing

were the vote.

No, you into them?

Don't do that.

Oh, please.

Yes.

No, this is like one of those Connor takes where it's just you want to be a little grandma.

Wait, I like them too, to be honest.

This is what I call a Jerry Garcia take from you.

Why is everyone killing their uniforms?

The uniforms were awful.

I side with Connor on this to some degree, yeah.

Yes.

All right, agree to disagree.

But how about we're awful, Dan, by the way?

I'm okay.

2-2.

Tie score.

But, like, the only thing uglier might have been this game plan.

Like, all this excitement around Malik Neighbors and pushing the ball downfield.

They didn't attempt a single pass over 20 air yards in the first three quarters.

Like, what are we doing?

And it got sad quickly, right?

Like, you could see the moment where Brian Dable was like, ah, shit, you know, and started basically running like two-yard keepers with like Daniel Jones behind a pair of tight ends.

And you're just like, this is, you could see the moment that everything changed.

Malik neighbors did look really good when he got the ball just didn't happen all that well at least they have like locker room dogs like Kayvon Thibodeau that will make sure like the vibes don't get ugly there you know you need those high character guys yes another guy who looked awesome with the ball in his hands is a guy that many people like Joe Mixon left for dead because he's old and washed Aaron Jones 14 carries for 94 yards he was ripping off runs left and right and a touchdown I mean I think that that was as important to Sam Darnold's success as anything, is that he had a strong running game in front of him.

And yeah, Aaron Jones, see, it's not like Aaron Jones should be seen as Dalvin Cook or something.

Like, Aaron Jones is still a very productive player.

And I thought what the Packers did was kind of a lateral move with Josh Jacobs.

So that was a really good pickup by the Vikings.

I think,

hey, listen, I picked him to go to the playoffs.

I've been talking about Sam for a long time.

I think this offense can do some damage, and that's a great star for them.

All right, let's move on to Atlanta, where the Kirk Cousins era began.

Mark Zessler.

The citizens of Three Rivers are drinking Iron City beer in the streets and openly fistfighting their aunts and uncles out of sheer joy.

Can you win a game with nobody else but a money kicker?

and a defensive world crusher.

Yes, you can.

Chris Bosworth, on a good day for kickers, six for six, banging field goals.

And he had to become the punter at one point and did fine.

And TJ Watt was an anti-hero operating from a place of satanic fire.

Two tackles for loss, two QB hits, the game-ending sack, and it could have been much more.

He had two strip sacks wiped out by penalty.

He was all over the place.

And it's not unusual to see that, but he looked incredible.

Kirk Cousins was trapped in a hellscape as every Falcons lineman allowed multiple pressures.

Cousins did not help with a pair of ugly picks.

The second, a ghastly one to Dante Jackson, giving Pittsburgh the ball in the red zone, up 15-10 with two minutes to go.

Justin Fields, underbaked.

Russell Wilson was inactive and still somehow in pads.

I don't know what was happening there, but Boswell and Watt didn't flinch.

Jinser's 18.

Dirty Birds, 10.

This is 2024 Steelers football.

Man, a perfect Steelers win.

When they go 9-8 or 10-7,

remember this game and five more like it that they just always find a way.

Six field goals for Boswell, three of them longer than 50 yards.

Unbelievable.

And yeah, Russell Wilson, he's a weird guy.

Russell Wilson, full shoulder pads underneath the uniform.

Like, how is it, Connor?

That's some odd behavior for a guy that was inactive with a calf injury.

So this is not the first time that something like this has happened.

So if we go back to when he was in Denver, if you'll remember, there was sort of like it wasn't going well.

And then all of a sudden, Brett Ripon was supposed to make a start.

And then there was a very strange sort of like statement put out by Adam Schefter that was like, well, Russell Wilson really wanted to play and his coach said no.

And then this exact same thing happened today where it was like 20 minutes before the enactives come out.

There's a very strange report that's like, hey, well, Russell Wilson wants to play and his coach says no.

Wait.

See how long Mike Tomlin puts up with something like that.

Yeah.

How about the

Kirk Cousins debut, Mark?

Obviously, statistically, not great.

The protection, what you're saying, is not great.

How did he look?

Did he look healthy?

I know he had the one touchdown pass to Kyle Pitts, who was just stunned to get a spiral thrown between the numbers.

He looked healthy.

I think that the pressure reeked upon him.

And also, obviously, you're not getting a guy on, you know, and Justin Fields was very milquetoast outside of running the ground a bit, but like Kirk Cousins can't escape that stuff.

And so when you can unleash the way they did in their entire offensive line,

every one of them are culpable.

As I mentioned, like each of them gave up two-plus pressures.

And it's like

the Cousins didn't really have a chance.

The first pick he threw was a bad decision.

The second was a terrible decision and a bad throw.

And he had another one early in the game that was dropped by Dante Jackson, who got the later interception.

That was just a turnover-worthy throw.

I mean, it should have been caught, and it would have unsaddled her cousins right away.

They had a field goal drive where he went seven for seven, and he looked clean, and you could kind of see it.

I will say one thing to your demands, though, that Bijan Robinson played all but five offensive snaps and was used all over the place in a lot of different ways.

And you did get that Pitts touchdown.

It still, to me, felt a little pent up like some of those Falcons games from a year ago, but I also think it came against one of the better defensive, individual defensive performances you're going to see.

And they're lucky that those two other strip sacks by Watt were taken away by penalty.

I mean, it was just a day that could have looked worse than it did, and it still didn't look too great for anyone involved at either quarterback position.

And Fields, I mean, they won, and if he gets another start and they win another game, for instance, that could lead to him staying in that position.

But did he do anything in this game that made you think that he might be making Mike Tomlin reconsider whether Russell Wilson should be QB1?

I think that Mike Tomlin for years has talked about wanting a mobile quarterback that can cause problems on the ground.

And fields, when he gets into trouble, especially,

can still do that.

And he did that today.

I thought that was the best part of his game.

But he seems to be, he's like a tractor beam to pressure.

And it happened against Day.

And the other thing that carried over from the preseason action that I saw him play was issues with the center, center exchange stuff still.

And so it's just you're getting a mixed bag of, hey, this is the why, here's the reason you should stay in the lineup, mixed with, here's the reason you shouldn't be on the field at all, mixed with the other guy is Russell wilson so we've got a problem here

and it should be noted that the now falcons

you lose your home game the way they they set up these schedules if you don't take care of business in that week one home game where you have a opponent that's not a big-time team and the steelers are not a big-time team then you could be in trouble the falcons now go on the road

monday night football against the eagles and they created this remember that if things go terribly next monday night michael Pennix on the bench is going to be something that's going to become a drumbeat story.

As ridiculous as it might seem to a lot of us, it's going to become a thing.

And they signed up for that.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

It's just one game, but it wasn't a good one for the Falcons.

Let's move on to Inglewood, California, where the Chargers began a new era.

Jim Harbaugh.

With that

stare just cuts right through you.

Those eyes.

He's officially back, and he made that be known by coaching the most Jim Harbaugh game possible in his Chargers' debut.

The bolts smothered Gardner Meanshu and the Raiders on defense.

And the start of the attack, the star of the attack was, of course, starting running back J.K.

Dobbins, who went off for a 135 and a touchdown on just 10 carries.

Yes, he did look like he had a piano on his back when he broke a long one in this game.

So maybe the speed isn't where it is, but absolutely effective in limited work.

The end result a 2210 win that wasn't necessarily pretty to us but surely was a thing of beauty to jim harbaugh um i want to get right into this because it drives me crazy conservative coaching drives me crazy um conservative coaching in

The year of our Lord 2024 is even more egregious because there's so much evidence

of the way the game should be played.

And you play to win the game and Antonio Pierce does not play to win the game.

You're not going to see a dumber call decision by a coach all year.

I'm telling you, this is a game.

The Raiders are down six in the fourth quarter, 7-15 to play.

We're midway through the fourth quarter.

They're down six points.

The Raiders are on the Chargers' 43-yard line.

It's fourth and 11.

No, it's not.

It's fourth and one.

It is fourth and one from the Chargers' 43-yard line, 7-15 to play in the fourth quarter.

You're down six points.

You bring out the punter.

Nansen Romo on the call.

Romo, naturally, what we're all thinking is, well, the only reason...

This punter is out here is because this has to be a fake, right?

No.

He punts it away.

He, Antonio Pierce punted the ball away on fourth and one from the Chargers 43, down six in the fourth quarter with 7-15 to play.

Naturally, the football gods said, hell no.

The Chargers took over, went right down the field, and scored the touchdown that put the game away.

That drove me nuts.

I cannot even imagine how Raiders fans felt watching that.

There's a few things about this that were hysterical.

If you watch Antonio Pierce's press press conference, the first thing he says is, well, it was a long one.

Like it was like the ruler.

A long one yard.

Oh, yeah, one of those things.

The second was that he said, well, the punter was just crushing him inside the 20 all game, which would lead you to believe by versus odds that he would not, but he had hit three.

So the odds are he probably wouldn't do it again, right?

And that's the second thing.

And the third thing is, like, just generally speaking, Dan Campbell did the smartest thing that any coach has ever done, and it's changed the conversation on fourth down conversions from analytics to a question of whether or not you believe in your team.

That is part of the reason why the Lions started doing this with such regularity.

It was, I don't care what the numbers say, it is, I believe in my team.

It's not a trend thing, it is a belief thing.

And Antonio Pierce, you're already, you're an interim head coach, turned head coach.

You've already got a short lifespan.

Just do it.

And what's even more frustrating is that the Raiders,

especially on defense, really played a good game.

And

they're playing their balls off for you, coach.

And, you know,

here's what the Chargers did in the first half of this game.

Six points, 83 total yards, two first downs, 0 for 7 on third downs.

Herbert threw for 67 yards, the second fewest first half passing yards in his career.

So the defense did exactly what you wanted.

Christian Wilkins and Max Crosby were as good as advertised, wreaking havoc up front.

And I know we talked about Daniel Jones, Mark.

We just talked about a coach not maybe having the trust in his quarterback and making decisions that are frustrating.

But you have to understand if you don't believe in your guy, maybe you make decisions.

Gardner Minshew had

statistically not the worst day, but had a really bad fumble that led to

a game-turning point situation where he lost the ball out of his hand and it was

for

recovered for a turnover and

he took the ball out of the hand of his offense in that spot.

And that's just,

that's a tough one to live with and something that I think probably reverberates in that locker room.

Yeah, I mean, like, I'd ask the question because I, you know, the Raiders are always a little bit of a different team organizationally or perceived that way.

We're like, other teams, you know, you've got people in Pierce's ear saying, everything that we know tells us to do this.

And it and so does he come and overrule that?

And if you have issues with gardner minshew

i'm coming from a different angle that's all the more reason to go for it in some way find a creative way to get that yard and give a lackluster quarterback situation a better chance like and you can't keep asking the defense to keep making stops over and over i i just think it's it's not even kind of like playfully um different than what other coaches are doing it's just kind of like every one of us agree like this is not 1989 why did you not do that in that situation and it's got to have a really good explanation.

And just saying it's a longer yard than some yards is the kind of thing that we're going to talk about it the way we are.

We don't buy that.

You know, it's like, come on, Antonio.

You know what it sounded like?

It sounded like the thing a head coach, an overmatch head coach says who got, who's an interim coach, who got his team over the hump in December, and then real games came the next year and was out of his depth.

That's how it came off to me.

And until you coach in a way that's caught up with the times, that was the first time that any coach did something in that situation, which was was punt on fourth and one in plus territory when you're within a touchdown since Rex Ryan in the 2016 Bills opener against the Ravens.

Like, it just doesn't happen anymore.

It's just mind-boggling because like, what's your alternative hope here?

Is that you punt it, you get a stop, they kick it back to you and you have a short field.

And then you have to drive, what, 40, 50, 60 more yards and go score a touchdown when you are one yard away from continuing the drive that you have?

Like, come on.

Shout out again to Dobbins, who's dealt with a lot of injury issues, obviously, in his career.

And that was a really nice performance for him.

So you want to see what he has next.

And shout out to Lad McConkey, who had the kind of closeouts touchdown in this game.

He made two guys miss, was looking nice and slithery.

He's going to be a guy that's going to be very helpful to Justin Herbert, who overall doesn't, he looks like a guy that no longer has Mike Williams and Keenan Allen and is going to have to figure some things out with this passing game.

And it might take time for for that to happen.

All right, let's take a break, and then we will move on.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse, and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest-paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was queer.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Heed the call with Dan Hansis and Mark Sesslers on Underdog.

So why not start playing on Underdog today?

I'm doing it.

I'm getting rich.

Download a play on the Underdog app.

Sign up with the code HTC.

That's us, and receive up to $1,000 in bonus cash for our U.S.

audience only.

All right, we are back.

Let us head to the land of the 12s with Connor Orr.

A game that looked like it was played by a tribe of Scottish Hill people who received a briefing on the rules in a foreign language minutes before kickoff.

Sunday's hottest club was Seattle versus Denver.

Seattle won this game 26-20 despite one of the weirdest stretches of football in recent memory.

Seattle committed a holding penalty in its own end zone for a safety, and then a few short drives later, called a running play out of the shotgun, deep in their own end zone, which resulted in, you guessed it, another safety.

Two safeties.

Two safeties.

The scores in this game were at different points, 5-3, 8-3, 9-8.

Stop.

Seattle became the 26th team in NFL history to give up two safeties in a game.

They also did this, guys, in 1982 against the Broncos at the Kingdom.

Bo Nix finished 26 of 32 for 138 yards and two interceptions with some bright spots.

Field goal drive at the end of the half with a great back shoulder throw to Josh Reynolds.

Meanwhile, weird start for Mike McDonald in this game.

First three plays of the season, sack interception, false start.

And then he was also getting a very weird back rub from Marshawn Lynch, just like in the middle of the game.

Wait, Marshawn Lynch?

Yeah, just like on the sidelines, like rubbing his back like in the middle of the game.

Yeah, so just a very weird and Mike McDonald just doesn't look like one of those guys that

is expecting it, is excited about it, but like the whole thing was just so weird.

But no running game for the Broncos.

Bo Nicks looked wild most of the time.

And we never got to see Seattle get into that really cool sort of no-huddle offense that I think we're going to see at some point this season, but definitely not today.

Yeah, I thought that given Mike McDonald having the whole summer to game plan here and

how raucous it is up there in the Pacific Northwest and Bo Nix's first game, it felt like a really tough assignment for the Broncos.

But also, like,

what you're explaining to me reminds me of that old Kevin Clark tweet that always gets resurfaced, which is the Seahawks have never played a normal game.

So it's good to see that that streak continued here.

I still can't get over, though, like the handoff, the shotgun handoff to the point where Geno Smith's heels were nearly in the end zone, and they're lining up for it.

And the color, I forget who the color analyst was, but the guy's like, surely they're not going to hand the ball off here.

And everyone in the stadium just made this horrified groan and he just ran straight into the back of his offensive line.

And to have that happen, like Mike McDonald, you could see after the game, he said something to the effect of they were showing him, and it was just like basically said, like, holy shit, this didn't look good, you know, but we got it.

And like, I'm glad that's behind me.

He got this job because he was this kind of brainchild, I think, who is going to outthink a lot of these great offensive coaches.

But this was the, I mean, thank God he survived that speed hump and got over it because this game could have been really bad.

I'm looking at like the drive chart for Denver and they had 15 drives and by my count, 10 of them went for less than 20 yards and eight of them for like less than 10.

So what was the frustration,

irritation level of Sean Payton?

Or is he because he's dealing with Bo Nicks, you know, not a completely stacked offense?

Is he just kind of, is there a patience to him or is it the opposite?

Well, and to connect with Mark's question, every time I just kept on seeing it pop up over and over on Twitter, it was like, almost another interception by Nick's.

Oh, another dropped interception, another one.

And I was like, it sounds like this one could have been a lot worse than it even was, at least statistically.

We didn't talk about this in the Browns game, but there were so many near picks in that game, Mark, too.

And I know you remember that, but this had the same feel where this game could have been an unmitigated disaster.

And it goes back to me to the preseason where Bonix is moving a lot when he doesn't need to be.

It's sort of like, you know, when you, when you feel awkward or uncomfortable, you just kind of are expending energy and sort of wheeling around in the backfield.

And he's still doing a lot of that, which is really weird.

And you know, it was bad when they got to the point where like Sean Payton was kind of like leaning on his mobility at points in the game just to try to get him to go in.

But Sean Payton, by the way, weirdest, very aggressive sunglass choice, by the way.

Very low.

I don't know if anyone wants to check that out.

I'll get that.

That sounds like a game pass thing I look forward to tomorrow.

Yeah.

Tape study.

Yeah.

Geno Smith faced a lot of pressure.

One thing to keep an eye on here,

George Fent,

their tackle went out with a knee injury and was quickly ruled out.

They're already without Abraham Lucas, so now they're in a situation where they might have a third-string tackle.

So that's something to watch out.

And you know what else?

Bo Nix has got to watch out because they get the Steelers next.

So, I mean, it's cool to be like, oh, the first rookie quarterback since John Elway starting for the Broncos.

But do we ever think maybe to put these guys in better positions?

Yeah.

Not that Zach Wilson needs to be thrown to the Wolves again.

I mean,

for Christ's sake, keep Zach

tied to the bench.

Garrett Bowles left this game, too.

So that's not the person you want leaving the lineup with TJ Watt times six coming at you.

All right, ugly win, but the Seahawks will take it.

Let's head to Soldier Field, a new era.

Justin Graver is going to talk about his favorite team.

Oh, boy.

With the windy city buzzing with electricity for Caleb Williams' regular season debut, it was the Titans jumping out to a 17-0 lead.

Before everything collapsed, Chicago stormed back with 24 unanswered points without scoring an offensive touchdown.

They had a blocked punt.

A blocked punt returned for a score.

That sparked the comeback.

And then a pick six a few drives later gave the Bears the lead for good.

Both quarterbacks struggled in this game.

Both defenses excelled in this game.

And the Bears may be in this new era of quarterback play.

They got all the hype around this quarterback.

But in a lot of ways, this felt like the same Bears team we've been watching for decades, special teams and defense leading the way to the 24-17 victory.

And a fun stat for you.

There is one quarterback in the last 30 years with over 25 pass attempts, under 100 passing yards, 3.2 or fewer yards per attempt, zero touchdowns, and a win.

That's Caleb Williams.

Hey.

Well, I think Caleb Williams in his comments after the game, he had the right perspective where I think he said, like, after the game, when everybody was celebrating, he was just kind of sitting off a little bit and appreciating all the good vibes around him, knowing that he didn't help and he wants to try to fix that for next week.

That is a crazy stat, Justin.

And I'll say that, like...

Yeah, I saw, again, this is a game that I'll be watching on Game Pass, but you saw 17-0, and then you blinked, and all of a sudden they were down seven.

And the throw,

Listen, we'll see about Will Levis.

We know he's great in his mayonnaise commercials, Graver.

And I'm not going to pile on here, but now it's year two and the interception that he threw that changed this game, the pick six, is a throw that he cannot make ever again.

That is Zach Wilson.

That is Daniel Jones.

That is the stuff of busts.

And that was a major turning point in this game.

It was, I mean, it was the turning point.

It was 17, 16 when he made that horrible play, which started, by the way, with him taking the snap and immediately drifting to his left.

And he drifted right into the pressure.

JC Latham, the rookie left tackle, was credited with giving up five pressures in this game, but I think three or maybe four of them were on Will Levis, like drifting to the side in the pocket and like going straight into the pressure.

So he goes straight into that pressure.

He's like getting pulled down from behind and he tries to flip the ball, I guess, out of bounds, but instead he flips flips it right to Tyreek Stevenson, who takes it back all the way for a touchdown.

Was he trying to throw it away?

I thought he was trying to hit that receiver.

He might have been trying to hit the running back in the flat back.

Either way, no bueno.

He did a play like this earlier in the game where he did try to throw it away, and it didn't even get back to the line of scrimmage, and it barely bounced at the feet of the running back.

And it's like, I will say, Coming out of this game, I'm pretty concerned about the long-term outlook of Will Levis.

I don't want to make an overreaction to week one in a new offense against a defense that was very, very good last year.

But there are some concerning signs like, yeah, that was a horrible decision.

Flush that one.

Like, you know, good quarterbacks make bad plays all the time.

It happens.

But the constant drifting in the pocket, the inability to really like get the passing game going from in the intermediate area of the field, like beyond 10 yards, is a concern.

And the Titans as a whole, as an offense, they were kept trying to do the short passing game, the screen game, the check down to the running back game, and this Bears defense just did not.

I feel like maybe they missed one tackle or two on like a Tony Pollard touchdown run, but it felt like they weren't missing tackles hardly at all.

The Titans, receivers, and running backs were not shaking out of tacklers.

But Will Levis, he did make some nice plays with his legs, but he also took...

some big hits on those plays and at one point sitting on the sideline with a heating pack on his back because he took a massive shot to the ribs or the to his back and i don't know if that affected him you're spinning out justin you're spinning out

it is his 10th start though.

See, I think the problem is because it's year two, and there's been all this talk about, well, it's like 10 starts.

I see some similar stuff that I saw from Caleb Williams, like the Sebastian Joseph Day Sack, where Williams is figurating and thinking, it's August.

I can run away from this and make a play.

And it's like lessons being learned.

And I don't know.

We have no patience with these guys, but Will Levis has played 10 games, you know?

Exactly, Justin.

Keep the faith, buddy.

You believed in Levis this morning.

A lot of football to play.

The Bears win this game despite despite just 148 yards of offense.

And shout out to Hard Knocks favorite, Jonathan Owens, also

Simone Biles' favorite, who scooped up that block punt that was the initial turning point of the game and returned it for a touchdown.

So that's pretty cool.

All right, Justin, keep things rolling with a little Commander's Bucks talk.

Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers dominated the game.

Wait, hold on a second, Justin.

I just want to hear, yeah, just play this song.

I haven't heard this song in 35 years.

Play it.

Really stabbing on that synth, and I like it.

Yeah, it's nice.

All right.

Okay, go ahead.

Back to the setup.

Baker, Mayfield, and the Bucs dominated this game from start to finish.

Tampa Bay finished with 37 points.

They scored points on seven of their eight drives, excluding the final kneel downs.

And including each of their first five drives, Baker threw four touchdown passes, finished with a passer rating of 146.4, which as of the time of this recording is the highest passer rating of any quarterback of week one

two touchdowns to future hall of famer mike evans on the other side jaden daniels was electric in his nfl debut especially with his legs but he was like the lone bright spot in an otherwise pretty forgettable game for washington um bucky irving exploded onto the scene the rookie running back for tampa bay 62 yards on just nine carries chris godwin looked like the pre-ACL tear version of himself, and the Bucs cruised to a 37-20 victory that really was not as close as that score would indicate.

I feel like Dave Canala's leaving led to a lot of questions about whether this offense would continue to thrive.

But, man,

the way you just described that, Justin, that is a tremendous way to kick a season off and kind of build on the positivity garnered in Baker's first year there.

He really did a phenomenal job running the offense.

I mean, he was averaging 9.6 yards per attempt in this game.

He only took one sack, but he was also great at evading pressure because there were a a number of times that it felt like Washington had him dead to rights, and he was definitely going to be sacked.

And he would like spin out of it or run through the contact and either pick up yards with his legs or make something happen on the move.

He threw a really nice touchdown pass on a deep post route to the rookie receiver Jalen McMillan.

And earlier in the game, he had him on the same play and he overshot him.

And they came back to it later in the game and he hit him.

And I was super impressed.

I said going into the season, I thought Liam Cohen reuniting with Baker Mayfield as his offensive coordinator was going to lead to what felt like continuity for the Bucs offense because they bring back all the personnel.

Obviously, you change offensive coordinators, but when the quarterback has a relationship with that guy, it's not as big of a change.

And we saw it come to fruition.

I will say Washington's defense, especially in the secondary, not a great group of players.

So perhaps this was sort of a mirage against what's probably going to be one of the worst teams in the league.

But at the same time, I picked the Bucs to win the NFC South, and I feel really good about it after today.

It is interesting that, like, we're talking about a day where

Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold both shown, and it's like these guys went through so many career changes, right, Connor?

Like, Baker had, I think, four different coaches in Cleveland, then he's on three or four different teams after that.

And to be in the same place with a lot of the same pieces around you for a full offseason, it helps and it shows.

I think it matters.

Like, Mark, you remember this when Baker was with the Browns, and someone asked Hugh Jackson if he had talked to Lincoln Riley or asked about the offense that Baker succeeded in.

And he was like, no.

And just how stunning that was in that moment and how all of these quarterbacks, Geno Smith included, right, had played in a really unique system at West Virginia, have all come to the point where it wasn't like anything magic happened.

It's that their coaches sat down and talked to them and said, what are the five to ten things that you're really comfortable at doing?

What do you like to do?

Okay, let's build an offense around it.

You know, this isn't hard.

Liam Cohn was on that Rams team.

Do you remember when Baker Mayfield showed up on like Wednesday night at midnight and then on Thursday won the game for them on Thursday night football?

So, you know, it's one of those situations where it's like, hey, this is this cool revolution where you're just not being stuck up and listening to what your quarterback tells you.

The commanders won offensive play,

according to ESPN, that went for more than 30 yards, and it was on like a short pass to Brian Robinson Jr.

So

we're going to see.

Yes.

On the commander side of things, like there was a lot of concern.

They traded Jahan Dotson that their number two receiver and the rest of the receivers who aren't Terry McLaurin were not going to be good enough to help in this game.

And that totally came, sorry, weren't going to be good enough to help this season.

And that totally came to fruition in this game.

Austin Eckler was their leading receiver with just 52 yards.

Terry McLaurin was extremely quiet.

Two catches for 17 yards.

And Cliff Kingsbury, I mean, we know he likes to run three receiver, four receiver, even five receiver sets.

And they don't have, I mean, those sets right now, the personnel on the field is like Terry McLaurin and Diami Brown and Brian Robinson, Austin Eckler, Zach Ertz.

Ertz.

Like, they don't have the playmakers to help out Jaden Daniels.

But I do feel really good about my Jaden Daniels will rush for over a thousand yards prediction.

He had 88 yards today on the ground and two touchdowns, carried it 16 times.

And I actually think it might be sustainable because he didn't take, he took a couple of hits, but he didn't really take a lot of big hits.

He was sliding a lot.

He jumped over a defender to get out of bounds one time.

Like he had an he had a nice game for what was on his shoulders here.

So I was pretty impressed with Jaden Daniels, even though he didn't have a great statistical game passing the ball.

He's electric with his legs.

He ran three more times today than Robert Griffin ever did in a single game with Washington, which is

kind of funny.

Talk about a sign of the times.

I have one last thing to hit on this game, Dan.

Sorry, I know I'm going a little long, but there was a really cool moment near the end of the third quarter.

The Bucs set up a screen to Rashad White.

It went for 32 yards, but it was flagged for illegal man downfield.

And it's like, oh man, that play's not going to count.

Then the replay booth comes in, looks at the play, and they say, you know what?

Graham Barton actually wasn't illegally downfield.

So this play will stand.

They overturned a penalty with the replay review, which is just a great development for the sport, for the NFL, which has, you know, officiating questions left and right about full-time officials and blah, blah, blah.

When you can step in and say, you know what, that flag was a bad call, actually, this play should stand.

And you can look at it on tape and clearly see that the offensive lineman is not more than a yard downfield.

Why would you not do that every time?

I was so happy to see that that happened in this game.

All right, how about next next week and review personal fouls on hits to the quarterback's helmet and

hits over the middle?

If we're really going to make some strides, that's my next call.

Next call also will be: all right, so does Daniels have enough help?

Maybe, maybe not.

Does Bryce Young have enough help?

Are we going to have this conversation again?

To New Orleans with Connor Orr.

Every game I got was terrible.

Attention, Panther fans, and away team seating Section 104B, the Superdome, has not sprung a leak.

You are being showered by a cup of $500 Lagavulin hurled by the raging owner of the Carolina Panthers.

The beginning of the Dave Canalis era reveals just how poorly this roster has been managed for nearly a decade.

Bryce Young threw two interceptions and compiled a QB rating of 32.8 amid a merciless pounding at the hands of a potentially spicy Saints team.

Final score here, 47-10.

Alvin Kamara, Jamal Williams each scored a rushing touchdown.

Derek Carr threw three total touchdown passes.

And Alante Taylor, fun fact, became the first Saints defensive back to ever have three sacks in a game.

The Panthers had no answer for any pressure.

Anytime a linebacker got in the backfield there, it seemed to send Bryce Young pinballing, missed a lot of throws, even after properly navigating the backfield and avoiding defenders.

Meanwhile, Saints offense thrived under new coordinator, Clint Kubiak.

Taysom Hill played like every single position and was actually taking consequential third-down snaps, carrying the ball in short yardage.

And yeah, Foster Moreau looked really good in this one, too.

Saints put up nearly 50 points and only two catches for Chris Olave.

Oh my goodness.

Mark, I feel like the Saints fan confidence meter will be up after week one.

Yeah,

I think that's going to happen.

I mean,

they were a team about as dismissed as you could find all offseason, and a lot of it had to do with the quarterback.

But the Clint Kubiak thing is just another branch coming off the old Shanahan world where it's like there is, you know,

this was the Sean Payton offense, and they were shoving Derek Carr into it.

And it's great.

This is kind of like what we talked about.

Like, build something new, use your players the right way.

I will say that I'm looking at a Carolina team and wondering, like, is this just even more broken than before?

Because I think before the Saints fans get too wild about it, like, there's going to be real tests.

They've got Dallas on the road next week, the Eagles after that, the Falcons in Atlanta, then the Chiefs, then the Bucs.

So we'll find out over the next three or four weeks who they really are.

But

for where the psychological place of this fan base was,

this has to be, this is one of the more surprising week one results because even if you were to tell me that we're going to win, I'd be like, no problem, but just put up 47 points.

I don't really remember the last time post

Breeze that the Saints did anything close to that.

So this was not an expected result.

To that point, New Orleans had 30 points by halftime for the first time since the Drew Breeze era.

And I'm just thinking, like, what are we going to have going on this week in Charlotte?

Tepper be drinking, Tepper B screaming, Tepper B sobbing, Tepper be firing,

Tepper be all.

Hopefully, Tepper be talking because I can't wait for the next episode of Tepper be talking.

Yeah, total nightmare scenario.

Worst case scenario for the Panthers,

Connor, who this was supposed to be the clean slate, and

they thought that they plugged some holes and made themselves more competitive.

But unless the Saints ended up shocking the world, this is not a high-end team that just absolutely trounced them, and it points to potential disaster here.

I mean, is Bryce Young,

like,

how would you label his game?

Uh, I know statistically it's terrible.

Uh, did he look like he made any gains or does he still look like the scared, uh, overwhelmed scatter shot quarterback he was a year ago?

What's really weird is like when,

like I said, you know, it was just like a linebacker blitz or something, right?

And then it would just send him pinballing, but he always would navigate the pocket correctly.

But then once he reset and got downfield, he would just fireballs over his receivers' heads or throw these really kind of head-scratching interceptions.

And so it's a weird thing because you don't always see it that way, right?

Quarterbacks who are scared are like running into pressure, like Justin talked about kind of with Will Will Evis.

You're drifting into trouble.

Bryce Young gets himself out of trouble and then makes the bad pass.

And I don't know if that's

just because the receiving core still hasn't come around.

There's not a lot of talent there.

The offensive line's bad.

I don't know what it is.

But if this thing, if we project this further down the road, I mean, like, this is a team that looks like it could be in contention for the number one pick very easily.

Oh, my goodness.

That would be three years in a row.

There's a crazy stat from this game that, like, Bryce Young had 3.606 seconds to throw, which is the sixth most of

any game he's played.

So it's like the longer he's have has the ball, like to your point, he's creating problems for himself.

And it's like, I thought what Canalis was going to do, because there was some preseason tape where it looked like he was getting rid of the ball quickly.

He was decisive.

It It looked like a better situation for Bryce Young, but then this happens today, and it's like we're back where we started from.

I know we're trying to find out if this is the year we finally see a team win back-to-back-to-back Super Bowls with the Chiefs.

Has it ever happened?

Has that team ever went back-to-back-to-back number one overall pick, the Panthers, off to a bad start?

And by the way, you know, before we go to Sunday Night Football, the Derek Carr haters, just remember that there are these games as well.

19 of 23, 200 yards passing, 8.7 yards per attempt, three touchdowns, no picks, 142.5.

He's not the best quarterback in the world, but he's far from the worst.

This was a good day for Dan.

All Dan's little quarterback projects thrived so far.

Got your daughter.

He is no longer one of my projects, but in general, the New Orleans hate fest for that man, like

you have not seen truly bad quarterback play there in a while.

He is not bad.

He's just Derek Carr.

To Sunday night football.

There's our girl.

Sunday night football.

The Los Angeles Rams and Detroit Lions, and it was a corker.

The Rams pull ahead late in the fourth quarter on a Matthew Stafford to Cooper Cup joint.

Cooper Cup had, fun fact, 412 catches in this one.

But it was a misconnection from Stafford to Cup of just barely overthrown on a third down that opened the door for the Lions, who took a final opportunity the fourth quarter to tie the game with a field goal.

And then, after winning the coin toss, going right down the field, running it right down the throat of an exhausted Rams defense and into the end zone, David Montgomery putting the final touches on a 26-20 win for the home Lions.

A big, big celebration at Ford Field.

And Mark Sessler,

this game very nearly did not go to script, and it really looked like the Rams were going to find the way.

Even though the Rams shot themselves in the foot repeatedly in this game, they were in position, but they left the door open.

And what good teams do with slightly ajar doors, they kick the goddamn thing open, and that's what happened tonight.

Right off the hinges, that's what they did.

You know, I think the regulation ended, and the Rams had 21 more plays than the Lions.

And you had a breakout game from Jamison Williams, and very few other people, including like Amon Ross Saint-Brown, were part of the passing game.

So it was a little bit of a strange performance for the Lions.

And then, when it mattered, and I have to tell you, you know what kind of football I like, like what happened in overtime to me is exactly what kind of gets my heartbeat going because suddenly you have David Montgomery looking like an absolute battering ram.

I think that 21-yard run, followed by the nine-yard run, and then you've got the Rams defense essentially wishing they could be taking a nap at that point, like on an airplane home, because they're tired.

None of them play in the preseason, and

the Lions just kept...

It just seemed to me that they almost got like play after play, like, we are not going to be stopped.

This suddenly turned into Dan Campbell's vision, Lions football, and that timeout where the Rams sat there knowing that the next play probably would end it, and then David Montgomery just batters in for the touchdown.

That's what a team like the Lions with these expectations shake off whatever happened before and just go be exactly who they are, their DNA, their nucleus.

And that's why this Lions team is incredibly fun to watch.

They just did exactly what they were doing.

This is why it's not since maybe

Super Bowl 53 Patriots Falcons has a coin toss meant so much because it felt like the game was sealed at that moment.

Once you've got to look at those Rams

defenders, let me go through it real quick after the kickoff for overtime.

Khalif Raymond, really nice play call there

on the end around for 12 yards.

Montgomery for 21, Montgomery for nine.

Goff, short pass right to Gibbs for 10.

Gibbs for three, Montgomery for six, Montgomery for eight.

The timeout that we talked about at the goal line, Montgomery in right side, game over.

That is, I mean, for like Mark's saying, Dan Campbell fever dream is how that game ended.

It felt, though, even to me, it was before that, where

right before the end of regulation, you had a couple of plays that were just outstanding.

Like Amon Ross St.

Bound tripping and then batting down a surefire golf interception.

Jameer Gibbs getting a first down and then, you know, ended up being the 10-second runoff, but having the wherewithal to try to backspin his way out of of bounds, Dan Campbell's ability to find those guys, I think, is sort of that little separator.

Like, obviously, their offensive line is unbelievable and so powerful, but it's

those little margin things that the smartness of the team, whatever you want to call it, the DNA, what he looks for,

it really does make all the difference in those little moments.

Puka Nakua went out of this game with an injury.

We saw him getting carted off.

He did not return, was

quickly ruled out.

Gravedigger, did we see anything about that?

We could check in on that.

But Cooper Cup, who obviously was the best receiver in the world a couple years ago, triple crown winner, put the Rams on his back with Stafford to beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl.

And going into this season, it was like, what version of Cooper Cup shows up?

14 catches for 110 yards and that big touchdown in the fourth quarter.

So, you know, the Rams obviously are disappointed here because you really did have a chance to get out of here with a win.

But there are things that you could look at and say, man, if we executed better in the red zone, we would have won this game.

If a couple of things went differently in the fourth quarter, we would have won this game.

So there are things that to clean up, but overall, there are some real positives for the Rams, even though this is a frustrating loss.

But you just want to know, like, what is the Nakua status?

Because that is a major, major part of this offense.

That guy was unbelievable as a rookie.

There's nothing out there right now.

Obviously,

he was dealing with that Bursa Sack injury that Sean McVay back on August 6th, that he kind of burst it and said it was going to be week to week.

Nothing serious, nothing structural, but landing on that knee like that, you wonder if he maybe sort of re-injured something that he was already dealing with in the preseason.

Not good.

Not good at all.

I would just say that like on top of that, I mean, it's kind of incredible to see where the rams were in this game because at one point they had two only two starting offensive linemen in there you joe new

no boom went out steve avilla went out it's like and stafford i i thought and we kind of were we texted a little bit about it during the contest but stafford to me looked spry and youthful and found a way to escape what would have been intense pressure in other situations and made a couple throws in this game connor that like completely i mean they called one of them the throw of the year and it was across his body under pressure i don't even know how he could see where he was throwing it.

Incredible catch, too, but it's like Stafford finds a way, and I know he knows this, you know, he knows this environment well in Detroit, but like he finds a way to make some of these throws in every game that are incredible.

But with half his line out there, like battered, I thought that was just an incredible performance by Matthew Stafford.

Yeah, strange.

Patrick Mahomes isn't the only one who can do that, apparently, throwing like doing neat things with football.

But

I do think that combined with the fact that even if Puka Nakua is out, the Rams do have like this ability to identify those kind of people who will fit.

And even like there was a Jordan Whittington, I think, touchdown that got called back and six-round pick that was doing a lot of Puka Nakua things in the preseason.

I think there are a couple guys on that roster who can do it.

I think they just have the position down really well.

They know what they want.

And so it's one of those things that I do think if Matthew Stafford stays spry, this offense can still be really good.

Jamison Williams, as we said earlier, had the game that the the Lions were hoping that he was going to have.

And if he becomes now over 100 yards,

big play in this game, I think it's going to be the first of potentially many.

Amon Ross St.

Brown, obviously, he's going to get warmed up and have big games as the season goes along.

And that backfield, and you saw it obviously in overtime, perfectly split.

Jameer Gibbs played 51% of the snaps.

David Montgomery, 49% of the snaps.

11 carries for Gibbs, 17 carries for Montgomery.

Gibbs runs 18 routes.

Montgomery runs 12 routes.

They both contribute and both score.

So, you know, Ben Johnson knows what he's doing.

Collinsworth did a really nice job, and we were texting a little bit about it.

Connor, Sean McVay, who, you know, is the godfather for so many teams in terms of the offenses being run in the league now.

Their use of motion to find ways to get Cooper Cup open, even when everyone knows that Cooper Cup is the guy that they want to get the ball to,

made

no more clear than on that touchdown, just a master class in that.

So, like, I feel okay about the Rams coming out of this game.

I would be super frustrated as a Rams fan.

And when you're on that plane flying back to L.A., you're pissed because you know you had this game, but there's things to be optimistic about.

What goes into those motion choices, too, is some of these teams are insane.

Like, I remember sitting with Doug Peterson after the Eagles Super Bowl in his office and them saying that, hey, on the game-winning touchdown to Ertz, we looked back at the Patriots tape, and on like 30% of the time when these guys saw this motion, one of the defensive backs would bump into the other guy.

So we knew that something would happen, right?

And so you find these little things where Cooper Cup did this before that game, that go-ahead touchdown, and the guy that was supposed to be shadowing him, man, tripped.

And you better believe that they've watched him do that a hundred thousand times.

And you know, that maybe 10% of the time he's going to fall.

And you're just building in those little tiny things where you're giving yourself this little edge.

I mean, Cooper Cup in no world should be theoretically just being able to get this much open space.

And they're able to do that, which is really neat.

So great, great

end to a solid opening Sunday of action.

We're going to be back on Monday night recapping Jets Niners and the close of week one.

And

as you might imagine, I'm filled with excitement and anxiety anxiety about that game so we'll have a reaction to that

great job by everybody here gravedigger Connor

sess dog of course

we're off and running this is gonna be fun mark you feel good about week one recap I do I mean this is I'm having fun talking to the three of you and you know I'm I think it's admirable that great it if you're connect I'll give it a solid beat like if you're Connor it is essentially two and a half minutes from midnight right now that's commitment to to the effort, right?

Absolutely.

Connor, get some sleep.

And yes, if you do want the official grade of this show, it is a B-min.

Heed the call.

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