2025 NFL Week 4 Recap: AMPUTATION ACCOMPLISHED!

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Mark Sessler week four, it was a dream for you.

You had an early kickoff over in Ireland and then an overtime game on Sunday night that refused to end.

The NFL knows how to love me.

It sure does.

The rapture of Mark Sessler Week four flagship show begins right now.

Hey, welcome to Heed the Call and NFL podcast.

Week four flagship program.

You want to know what happened on Sunday in our league?

Well, you've come to the right place.

Dan Hansis,

Mark Sessler, Connor Orr,

Justin Graver on the ones and twos, Connor wearing a giant's hat.

You know, one of the most important things to be able to do, Connor, is to adapt.

Adaptability is key.

That's how you survive, whether it's in our business or in life.

And you have moved forward.

Whether or not the man you had the catch in the park is still around, you're still around, and therefore you and the Giants are still around.

I don't know who you're talking about.

It's a Darty party right over here, baby.

Let's go.

1-0.

We're going to get to the G-Men.

And they got off the mat.

They leave the ranks of the winless.

In fact, there are only two

undefeated teams left now, the Eagles and the Bills.

So we're going to get into all that.

But before we do,

and Sunday Night Football, I mean, Christ, we're going to do Sunday Night Football at the bottom of the show because I was so, my mind was just melted by the awful Sunday Night Football NBC coverage of the game.

We'll get into that.

To the bottom of the show, you go, okay?

Mark.

That's pretty anti-establishment to put the Dallas Cowboys at the bottom of the show.

And I like that.

Oh, my God.

I mean, how sycophantic can you be to the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones?

Like, how, all right, save it for the end of the show.

But for now, Mark Sessler, week four.

What is the theme of the week?

You know, we've been watching football since six in the morning here on the West Coast.

My theme over what we saw is

fresh faces, new fakers, rep makers, and one stinking corpse.

Dan, amputation accomplished.

Yes, as I I said, the Thursday theme.

We're big on themes, apparently, on the show.

Our preview show was reputation amputation week in the NFL.

What do you think this one means?

This theme of the week from Celser Connor?

There's a lot here, and as we learned last week, Mark puts a lot of clues in here.

And I've very quickly been trying to test it for different anagrams.

Like, do these words spell something else that is really at the front of Mark's mind?

We don't know.

Who's the corpse?

That's a fair answer.

Who's the corpse?

There was, there is one, I believe there is a corpse that's going to be delivered very soon.

We can get into that.

Oh,

it might be, we might have to save that for the next episode of Go Off King.

That would be my guess.

All right.

Am I right?

Is it related to Go Off King, the premiere episode?

No, it is related to an NFL coach, but

who I believe will be a corpse by the way.

When we get to it, let us know who the corpse is.

I will.

How could it not be the subject of this week's go-off, King?

But I can't wait to find out.

All right.

Without further ado, let's dig in to the week that was starting with a showdown between two teams that I think a lot of people, with all due respect to the Buffalo Bills and whoever your favorite team is,

the Ravens and the Chiefs, two teams who thought maybe this is the AFC Championship game.

Now you're starting to wonder if one of these teams is even going to make the playoffs.

To Arrowhead, we go.

Yes, Patrick Mahomes.

The Patrick Mahomes we grew up with.

Well, not grew up with, but the Patrick Mahomes that

we all

just stared at

with awe.

And we said, this is the best young quarterback to ever play the game.

Last couple of years, it's been a little more pedestrian.

Well, the Mahomes that took the league by storm was back on Sunday.

He threw for 270 yards and four touchdowns.

It's been a while since he did that.

Easily

outdueling Lamar Jackson, who left the game with a right hamstring injury.

And the Chiefs are the latest team to beat the hell out of a bad Ravens defense.

Final score, 37-20.

See,

this is why it's hard to do sometimes what we do for a living.

It's not as hard as living life in a coal mine.

I've done both things, but this...

is

I thought this would be the Ravens getting right.

I talked about it on Thursday.

Terribly, terribly, terribly prognosticated by Zuzzer.

Got to eat the poop on this one.

Because instead of the Ravens getting right,

they got embarrassed by the Chiefs.

And it really makes you start to think, is this not Baltimore's year?

Go ahead.

Well, I think two things are happening

specifically in this game.

Xavier Worthy was a massive difference maker for this Chiefs' offense.

They were openly planning to throw it to him deep.

It worked.

They used him on a wild 35-yard run.

His speed is a huge factor.

And you you get guys like Tyquan Thornton who have started to grow up in this offense during the absence of Worthy.

And he had a big play, too.

So, and the running game was working.

It's like, no, why was all this happening?

Because I think part of the problem for Baltimore is, yes, you lose Lamar Jackson, and the game was over at that point anyways.

But Ronnie Stanley goes out.

Roquan Smith goes out.

Marlon Humphrey goes out.

Nate Wiggins goes out.

They were already missing Matt Abuke, Travis Jones, and Kyle Van Neuy.

They're panning to the sideline, and you're looking at

half of your starting roster in street clothes.

And I think they're just, but they already were so banged up along the defensive line that they just feel completely compromised.

And I don't know if you survived this when you're already one and three.

If the record were flipped, maybe you can drop a few.

But the Jackson thing, it's a hamstring injury.

Cooper Rush obviously is not going to run that offense the same way, not even close.

And so, you know, in these seasons where we've lost Lamar Jackson for a number of games, like they're cooked.

I mean, here's to, you just mentioned a bunch of the players.

They are now up to

seven defensive starters out of the lineup because of injuries.

And as a result, Connor, this team, directly as a result, this team has given up 133 points in the first four games of the season.

That is, that's a record and not the type of record you want to set.

Not to, I don't want to disagree or be less alarmist because I enjoy being alarmist, but the AFC North is not what it was.

And I feel like the Bengals and the Steelers are not necessarily running away with this.

And even we'll get to Pittsburgh.

That's not a team that blows my mind and they tend to start fast and fade towards the end of the season.

I still think if Baltimore gets healthy, even by the midseason point, they just kind of dust themselves off and catch up.

This was a bad matchup for them offensively versus defensively.

And the Xavier Worthy thing was true too, but it took a really good effort for Mahomes to continue to be that quick game quarterback to beat Baltimore.

And so I think a lot of things were working against the Ravens today.

Well, there's a pushback on that, Connor, because

we know what the stakes are for the Baltimore Ravens this season.

They have to go to the Super Bowl.

So like, I agree with you that the AFC North is looking not so hot.

And you might be able to win this division at 10-7.

And if you win the division, you get a home game in the playoffs.

But these losses that the Baltimore Ravens have now taken, including one to the Bills and now the Chiefs, that has major implications on tiebreakers and things of that nature.

Even if they get off the mat, they have really dug themselves a hole.

And you said it yourself, Connor, on the Thursday show, and I agreed with it.

Like the Chiefs,

you thought to yourself, they have time to kind of figure themselves out.

The Ravens, a one and three start for the Ravens, felt more problematic.

So, yes, I agree that the season's not over, but man, this has been a very rough start that portends poorly for their future, in my opinion.

Well, I think injuries, it's like the Kyle Shanahan thing, right?

Like, he's going to get an excuse because every other year, half of his team gets completely obliterated by injury, and that doesn't make him a bad coach.

And so, the Super Bowl thing is self-imposed.

I mean, this is us saying that they have to make it to the Super Bowl or to legit.

What's that?

Them too, though.

Like, I think

everyone knows the deal with the Baltimore Ravens right now.

They're the raptures.

Every school year, I was like, this has got to be the year I kiss a girl.

And it took like five years longer than you were hoping for.

But that was a self-imposed deadline.

And eventually it happens.

And I think that the Baltimore Ravens will be fine.

It's just that the injuries are swelling at this point in the season.

Look at the Bengals.

Look at the Steelers.

They're not running away with this division either.

Well, it's a change division.

You're right.

That from where we were a couple months ago.

It's such a long season that it was the Chiefs we were saying.

They finally need to get some bodies back and they'll look different.

And today they did.

What kind of concerned me about the Ravens was

they opened the game with, I think, one of the most powerful offensive drives they've had.

And Derrick Henry ripping through the Chiefs' defense, Lamar doing Lamar's stuff.

And it looked like they're in this thing to be evenly matched and competitive.

And it went away right after that.

And it was a Steve Spagnola masterpiece.

And I really love the way that he brought pressure on Lamar.

Lamar was under a lot of heat before he left the game.

George Karlov just stands out as someone that they were moving all over the place and sending him right up the belly.

And that offensive line was not able to help Lamar.

So it got worse and worse and worse.

And then the injuries mounted.

And now you're sitting here thinking, when are we going to see the Ravens team?

We were sold.

I'm not sure when that's going to be a while down the road.

I'm just so mad at myself because, yeah, never underestimate Spaggs.

and he obviously cooked something up to slow down the Ravens offense.

And then, you know, when it's, when it's Reed and Mahomes, they tend to figure things out.

Now, we had just talked about the last game they played against the Giants.

They had to grind it out.

And we're like, maybe that's just who they are.

But to your point, maybe Xavier Worthy is a bit of a skeleton key to unlock some things.

And now we've gotten to, as we hit close out week four by tomorrow night, then there's week five, this is week six, and then rashi rice is back in week seven so you know it's funny how quickly the skies can part in our league and uh uh just one last part mark like from the the chiefs offense standpoint like watching mahomes thrive and and look like mahomes again it's been a while since we saw that yeah because it it it quiets down the confusing questions about why he has not been the same quarterback when I think it's just personnel around him.

When I mention new faces faces and as part of the theme like fresh faces xavier worthy completely changes this offense it completely changes what they can do and it i think it helped like travis kelcey as well but again it was a shattered raven secondary travis kelcey made some big plays in this game it's just it kind of like everything came together but checko had his best game of the year i thought it's like this is this was a fun to watch offensive effort what i've not i don't think any of us have felt that way about the chiefs all season obviously and the chargers stumbled today we'll get to that so a very good day for Chiefs fans.

And Pete Sweeney, our buddy, is writing some very optimistic copy.

Let's hear from Mahomes and then we'll move on.

The best your offense has looked all season and maybe in a while.

What was the difference and how much did having Xavier back out here help?

Yeah, I mean, it helps a ton.

I mean, to have that speed, he saw it.

He makes those big plays happen and it opens up everybody else.

So

super excited about how he looked.

We got to clean up some stuff in those first few drives, get touchdowns instead of field goals, but something to build on.

They're not going away, away, folks.

I know you want them to, but they're not.

All right, let's move to our neck of the woods, Los Angeles and SoFi Stadium for what I thought was the best game of the week.

2-2 at well.

He is a small man that can make big plays.

He doesn't often find a way into this Rams offense, but he sure did in a huge spot on Sunday, catching an 88-yard touchdown pass from Matthew Stafford with 93 seconds to play, enough for the Rams to rally past the Indianapolis Colts 27 to 20.

Oh, lock it up, Zuzzer.

Woo!

Well done.

Man,

I like this Rams team a lot.

I like Jared Verse kind of getting it together.

I love, yeah, Stafford, old man that he is, can still throw just a gorgeous deep ball in a huge spot like that.

Puka Nakua

with that flowing hair,

always open.

It's just a good football team.

Devontae Adams has a role on this team, and it hasn't been at the detriment of the offense where it's like we need to, no, he has a nice little role with this team.

And

that's all good.

But the Colts, I'll remember this game for what the Colts failed to do, which is win a game they should have won.

This was a game that they had,

and this will be remembered in Colts lore as the A.D.

Mitchell game.

He had two massive mistakes that took 14 points.

If I presuppose they make the extra points, 14 points off the board.

First was one of those all-time boners.

We've seen Deshaun Jackson do it.

He kind of invented it, I feel like.

And then we saw Jonathan Taylor actually do this a year or so ago.

We saw my buddy Malachi Corley for the Jets do it on Halloween last year,

where you are going to score a long touchdown and the ball comes out of your hand before you cross the plane.

Now,

I'm going to give Mitchell a little bit of a pass because he didn't do the thing where he dropped the ball as he was raising his arms and running into the end zone.

He was transferring, and this is after making a beautiful catch and then spinning out of a tackle.

It should have been a 76-yard touchdown, this in the second half.

He goes to transfer the ball from one hand to the other to hold it out, and then it slips out of his hands.

And you could tell by the way he reacted immediately.

It was like he knew

what the problem was.

So they ruled touchdown, but it got overruled.

Then Jonathan Taylor has a 50-plus-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter that obviously could have won the game for the Colts

holding near the line of scrimmage, about 10 yards north of it.

Who's responsible for the holding?

A.D.

Mitchell.

So this is the A.D.

Mitchell game in Indiana lore,

and the the Colts let one get away.

They really did.

They've been perfect in so many different phases, and it was one of the most surprising elements to the early season.

But today you turn the ball over and you commit mortal wounds.

Three turnovers.

Daniel Jones threw two picks, including a really bad interception that they still had a chance even after the

Atwell touchdown, and he kind of threw a ball up for grabs it was kind of the danny dimes through that um you saw with the giants a lot now i don't want to kill dimes he did throw two picks he could have thrown 30 at another one that was dropped but he also again made a bunch of plays in this game was like man he is really fitting in well with this offense uh i said connor before this game that The Colts didn't even have, for me anyway, didn't have to win the game.

If they can go to L.A.

and just duke it out with the Rams, I still will be like, okay, I'm in now.

So I'm still buying on the Colts because they very easily, they play this game 10 times.

I hate this shit, but I'm going to say it anyway.

They play this game 10 times.

They win it eight times.

So the fact that they can go on the road and hang like this, it's a hard one to swallow, but the Colts still, they look like they're the real deal in the AFC.

Right.

You lose the game because of the fumble, because of the hold, because on the Atwell touchdown, you have 10 guys on the field and you have one of the better D coordinators in the league.

How many times is that going to happen?

But it's one of those things that you see, you hear players all the time talking about the corrective nature of moments like this, and you you hope that they move on and they learn from it.

But on the Daniel Jones point, Dan, he was 12 of 15, I think, for like 200 yards under pressure.

He was under pressure for half of this game.

And so, against a really good pressure defense.

And so, for me, I'm with you.

Like, that's where I wanted to see him.

I wanted to see him tortured like he was tortured every down for the Giants.

And he doesn't look as bad as he did back then.

So, I think that that's a positive.

There's another world where they got dropped like 27 to 3.

And so, I'm completely with you on the sense that this team fought.

They're well coached.

We're going to get to the part of the season where

opponents have more tape information on Daniel Jones in this offense and what this offense can be and is.

And

it's going to create a challenge for them from top to bottom.

But I don't come away from this outside of mistakes thinking like, oh, this was a mirage or one of these sort of fake early undefeated teams.

The Rams are a Super Bowl contender.

Yeah, they gave up 462 yards to the Rams, and they have some injuries themselves mounting up right now.

They're secondary.

Kenny Moore, the second.

Jalen Jones is on injured reserve.

They

could not cover Puka Nakua.

Xavian Howard was totally overmatched in coverage.

A.D.

Mitchell on the

would-be 75-yard touchdown reception in the third quarter.

It was a matter of losing focus, and it's just a play that can't happen.

Just unacceptable.

I just got to be better for the team and for the organization.

Oof, that hurts, dude.

And the hold was a legit hold, too.

It was just a nightmare game.

The games that you have nightmares about, I would imagine, if you're a football player, is what A.D.

Mitchell went through in this game.

Like you take a different plane home.

Yeah,

one of those type of games.

And Sean McVay, I think Sean McVay understood that there were certain things that broke the Rams' way in this game, and he said as much afterwards.

So when Mitchell gave up the ball at the one inch line yeah it was how does that affect the entire team besides just the scoreboard sometimes you know sometimes the uh football gods are smiling down on you have some things that you know maybe haven't gone your way um in the previous week so uh we'll take it that was a uh don't ask me about that don't put a uh don't put a cloud over anotherwise sunny day right there

he just walked out the podium after that don't ask me about that what is that he it's like sean mcve doing a sean mcveigh voice now

What is that voice?

Did he sound like that two years ago?

Hey, guys, don't put that on me.

Don't put that on me now.

I'm just trying to enjoy the sunshine.

It could be that he's been, you know, screaming at people for five hours, but yeah.

Who is that?

Do we have another imposter?

We have a Tony Romo replacement.

Do we also have a Sean McVay doppelganger?

Where is the real Sean McVay?

You never know.

I'm just trying to enjoy the sunshine here.

Sounds like like Archie Bunker's.

Archie Bunker's wife.

What?

Did we just do that?

Wow.

Wait, hold on.

That is.

Archie!

That is fucking sweet.

I'm so thankful that A.D.

Mitchell fumbled that ball.

You both pulled that out at the same time.

That was weird.

We've been working together for...

I love you, Mark Zessler.

That was not me.

Say it.

Say it back.

Say it.

Say it.

I love you, Dan Hanson.

Oh, okay.

Thank God.

I'm not a needy person.

Dan, you sounded a little Marge Simpson-esque when you tried to do it, but that's okay because the movie.

Yeah, but do you know who Archie Bunker is?

Of course not.

No, it was a spot-on Edith Bunker.

It was spot-on.

Thank you.

It's like, oh, that impression's not actually the sound that you're going for, Dan.

Oh, do you know who the person I'm referring to?

No, I have no idea.

I didn't say you didn't sound like Archie Bunker's wife.

I said you also sounded like Marge Simpson.

Got it.

That's all.

Listen, I know you're on edge.

We're gonna get to the Titans.

Don't worry.

Oh, me.

That's Marge Simpson.

All right, let's move on to a undefeated, the undefeated game right now.

See, now this I can get behind.

Tush push sucks.

Fake tush push.

Give it to me.

Saquon Barkley Barkley scored on a bow tush push.

Jalen Hurts

threw a couple touchdown passes.

And the Eagles get help in their special teams game once again.

Add it all up, and they beat the Bucs 31-25.

That is 20 wins.

Let's give respect.

We give respect to everybody.

Even old Siriani.

That old red ass.

They've won won 20 out of 21 now, including a Super Bowl in the mix.

And Baker Mayfield, you know, this is what I took out of this game, Gravy.

This is what I took out of this one.

I talked about it.

Like, the Bucs, I think, are NFC South great, but NFL good.

They tried them out to comeback here, but there were two possessions down the stretch where stuff that was working against, like, say, the Jets, for instance, was not going to work against this Philadelphia defense, whether it was a Baker scramble or like rolling out and making a throw on the move that these, you know, it just, you saw the level, Zach Bond just like saying, no, I'm going to go sideline to sideline and shut your ass down.

Don't even try this, this magic stuff.

And I thought that that really was telling that the Eagles, the level of talent they have on their defense and the scheme Afangio is able to use with that talent, it shows up in these type of matchups.

Yeah, I mean, they did give up a 72-yard touchdown and a 77-yard touchdown, which I don't want to say, like, take out those plays, and it was a great defensive game because

I referring more to like the crunch time of it, like, when it really, when it was winning time, you saw that, right?

I agree.

And I think this game for the Eagles was sort of like an inverse of what they did last week, almost, except they maintained and held on to the lead to the end.

But yeah, opening the game with a blocked punt touchdown is going to help your game script and all that stuff.

I felt like in the first half, especially, and then towards the the very end, it felt like every time Baker tried to throw the ball to a receiver, here comes an Eagles defensive back at the last second, smacking the ball down and getting there right as the ball was arriving with the receiver.

It was, it felt smothering.

Again, outside of those two super long touchdowns, which again, like, you can't just take those away, but outside of those plays, it really felt like a smothering, smothering Fangio defense.

You mentioned Zach Bond.

You had that one.

I thought it was one of the plays of the day where he just came out of nowhere and buried Baker on an attempted scramble.

And they need that defense to do this.

Like, I don't want to harp on this over and over, but like I'm getting texts from friends being like, what the F is going on with this offense?

Because Barkley is running for 2.3 yards per carry and A.J.

Brown has seven yards today.

So the inverse is the right word from what we thought maybe they were breaking through with a week ago.

And maybe it doesn't matter.

You're winning these games as a complete team, but I think it would matter to A.J.

Brown at this point.

Do we have a tweet?

A.J.

Brown, who of course famously was reading the book about self-improvement or something last January, he has not been

a functional part of this offense or like a regular part of this offense really all year, except for one game.

So he tweets out afterwards.

One half, really.

One half.

I don't even know what this is.

Is it a song?

If you're not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw.

Don't make a scene.

Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.

So we're going to to keep our eye out now, Connor.

Now, you've dealt with players up, close, and personal for years and years, Connor.

Is this a precursor to the scrubbing the team from socials, or is that more an off-season power play?

What's the next step in this saga based on your experience?

It's hard because he's already been pacified financially, right?

There is no next step.

And if your complaint is boredom and that you're still probably going to get a thousand yards out of this, I don't know how many Eagles fans are going to feel sorry for you.

I mean, this is like we said, like 20 straight wins.

They have just fantastic coaches on all sides of the board.

The Eagles special teams coordinate, Michael Clay, like three blocks in the last two weeks.

That punt block was a work of art, by the way.

The way that he was able to line that up, got a personal protector, moved completely onto the other side, and let an Eagles guy run straight into the angle where the punters are kicking.

It was just gorgeous.

I watched that like 35 times in a row.

But yeah, I mean, I think the problem with AJ Brown is as long as this keeps happening and they keep winning, like he's getting older.

Like, what do you want?

You want to be traded?

I don't know what the next step is for him.

He's paid.

He's getting his targets at the end of the year anyway.

I'm just not sure what the issue is.

I know it's,

I don't want to get into it too much because people tend to take it the wrong way.

But if you are highly paid and

you are on the best team and you're a Super Bowl champion.

Like, it's not a great look to complain like this.

I don't, I know you want to get your touches and everything, but if they were one and three and this was happening, maybe you could justify it and be like, oh man, like, if you get me more involved, we're going to win these games.

We're losing.

But they're winning every single week, so shut up.

Like, take it, take it behind closed doors instead of making it about you.

This is the thing that people don't like about Diva number one receivers because they tend to think in the me form rather than the we form too often.

It's just not a great thing.

He has been quiet.

He's been pretty hushed up until this kind of enigmatic tweet.

Not a positive tweet

for what he's didn't say something week one and he was reading a book on the sidelines in January.

Well, and

it's a lot.

I think it was last week, he said something to the effect of

if we keep if you keep using me like this or whatever it is, that you know, we can't lead on the run all the time.

But I just want to point this out just very quickly, okay?

Last year was the first year of like a significant target drop when A.J.

Brown was in Philly between like 145 and 160 targets per game.

Last year it went down to 97, but he only lost 300 yards, right?

He still had seven touchdowns.

His yards per catch actually went up.

Like this is a better thing for him long term.

If you want like longevity, you're a physical wide receiver.

You know, I mean, you're going to be 29 next year.

What?

Like, this should be great news for you.

This is prolonging your football life.

Eagles are weird, though, man.

Like they're 4-0.

I'm not saying there's storm clouds above them, but still a little strange that Jalen Hurts goes 0 for 8 in the second half with minus one yard of offense.

They had 200 yards overall.

Is this sustainable?

That's what I'm saying by inverse of last week.

Last week, their offense was totally dead in the first half, and then they go to this aerial attack, and it opens up and everything looks great.

And this week, their offense in the first half was really on point.

All three of their offensive touchdowns were super creative play call designs.

You mentioned the fake tush push.

The other two were like these weird underhanded flip plays with all kinds of motion and creativity and the defense had no idea what was happening.

And then in the second half, you know, if the Bucs don't fumble the ball, but Bucky Irving fumbled the ball, Baker Mayfield throwing an end zone interception.

Like, yeah, the Eagles' offense vanished.

Vita Vea was in the backfield all the second half.

He had, I think, two sacks in the second half.

Like, I don't know what happened to the Eagles' offense in the second half, but it's considered.

So the Bulls blitzed him at like a 55% rate in this game, Jalen Hurts.

And Hurts, like, statistically against the Blitz today,

he's always been pretty good against the Blitz numbers-wise, and like he knew what was coming his way.

But to everyone's point, like, this second half, these are the net yards that you had on eight drives: negative nine, seven, negative seven, twenty-five, negative five, zero, eight, negative thirty-five.

That's going to bite you at some point.

It feels like there are spaces for other players to be used in this offensive time.

Here's how I think they're pulling it off, though.

A little smoke of mirrors.

Yes, just 200 yards, no turnovers, three for three in the red zone.

So they're kind of winning in other places and making the most of the yardage.

They do get.

You know, take your score of gami and stick it up your butt.

What I would like to know is how many teams have won a game where they had 200 or less total yards and gave up 25 or more points.

That's a stat I want.

That's the score of Gami I want.

Justin, spend the next six hours figuring that out, please.

Check that out, friends.

I'll just ask AI to figure it to do the research on that front.

What was the, was there a little Sirian?

Speaking of red asses, like two red asses going at it, Siriani and Baker?

What's the backstory on this?

I don't know what the backstory is in terms of like, do they have beef prior to this game?

I don't know, but you know, Sirianni is going to just be a talking dweeb on the side do we have this is there something I think yeah let me boil

the clip here because Tom Rinaldi narrates what's going on for us here nice look at this this is him jawing with Baker Mayfield after that last series then a little plump you'll see that Mayfield will get there but he continued to jaw at him as he's been doing all up and down this sideline all game imploring the team to keep the intensity up.

It's like red ass Mount Olympus.

I'll tell you what.

That doesn't bug me me, though.

Put those two on the top of red ass Mount Olympus and just let them fight to the death.

I want to see who wins.

But did you see Makuba come in and just elbow the shit out of Mayfield while Siriani's screaming at him?

It's like, it's just like, it's a whole team of assholes.

That's the draw.

It can work.

That's what I love about it.

It works.

Yeah, you've got to work.

Did you see Petulo and Nick Sirani bash biceps after both of the

because there was two alternate toasts?

Did Petulo bash biceps after they were like wow negative one yards in the second half on the best

oh man i love this team

i do have one more thing to to play from this game this is a tom brady special after bucky irving fumbles the ball which was really close I feel like I've always thought that the top of the hand slash wrist was down, but they ruled it that he wasn't down, so I don't know.

But Brady, looking at the replay, they show multiple times as it's under review, he said a few things that were funny.

That is really tight, Dean.

It is so tight.

That is super tight.

At it.

Does he not know he's doing that?

Sounds like we have the latest quad box

entry.

Stay tuned, Thursday.

All right, let's take a break, and when we get back, Connor Orr's favorite team.

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All right, we are back.

Yes, the Meadowlands.

Juice in that building because Jackson Dart is in the starting lineup, but would he be enough to take down the undefeated Chargers?

Maybe.

Yes, that's why yes, it was enough.

Jackson Dart, a lot of piss and vinegar to this guy.

Put him on red ass Mount Olympus.

I think he could do pretty well himself.

Do people know what red ass is?

I don't know.

Look it up.

It's your problem.

Jackson Dart threw a touchdown pass, ran for another score, tough as nails as he battled through a hamstring injury as well in his starting debut.

And the Giants

find a way against, yes, the previously undefeated Chargers, 21 to 18, a game that was tempered a bit, maybe more than a bit,

by the loss of Malik Navers, the young superstar wide receiver, carted off the field with a knee injury.

He went up for a

deep ball, a jump ball, and clearly looked bad.

Reporting out there is that it's a torn ACL and the season is over.

Dable didn't confirm it, but all the insiders seem to be certain that Neighbors is done.

So that's a bummer, but

Connor, what's not a bummer is putting, inserting Dart in the lineup, and you saw it in that emotional exchange between Dable and Dart as they kind of headed off the sideline after the win.

It interjected a lot of enthusiasm and excitement into this organization, and people walked out of Met Life feeling good about the Giants.

So the operation for one week was very successful.

I haven't heard it that loud since the Eras tour in 2023.

I mean, this place has been dormant for two straight seasons.

When I finished the game, I was like, okay, I have my notebook in front of me.

And I was like, Jackson Dart had to have at least 31 carries in this game.

And I went back and there was only 10.

It blew my mind that every time he touched the ball, it mattered.

It was producing some sort of a first down.

It was moving drives.

He was out of the pocket calling receivers, saying, get down here and throwing it to him.

And juxtaposed because we did get a play of Russ, right?

And for, I think, everyone at MetLife to be able to see what the quarterback position was like for the last three weeks and then have Jackson come back in again and do something.

phenomenal, it was stark.

I mean, Russell Wilson has not been able to handle pressure well.

Jackson Dart is just too young to care.

I mean, there was the play that got called back by a holding call, but he escaped the pocket.

And as he was approaching like a Cardinals or a Chargers defensive back, already had his hand out and just like punched the guy in the side of the head.

He's reckless in the best possible way, but you need to be because there's so many things working against you.

And the Giants almost lost this game on like five different occasions, but Dart was the difference.

Yeah.

It's like, it's important to see someone like this.

And why will New York fall in love with him beyond his fiery persona?

I mean, it fits, it's perfect.

He's young.

He brings hope.

But you play through the hamstring injury.

You get a concussion check at some point.

And your star wide receiver and best player on offense is lost for the season in the middle of the game.

And it just seemed like he handled everything.

without any panic.

It just, it kept making plays.

And that, his mobility is such an X factor.

And it's like, if you're, if you're a Dayball, you are, I mean, you're right, Dan, like the emotion on Dable's face and how shitty stuff must have been the last couple of weeks, like it just feels like a completely different operation when you get that young quarterback in there.

I thought I was, you know, I have a lot of friends.

Most of my friends back east are Giants fans.

And,

you know, when Neighbors gets hurt and then Dart is grabbing out his hamstring and, like, shaking his head at the sideline as they go to break, this is late in the second quarter.

I was talking with my friends.

I was like, this feels like one of those like Jets games.

And I'm sorry to bring it back to the Jets, but like one of those games that I've seen so many times where all the hope and excitement and hype.

And then just when the fan base is sucked in, it all gets taken away from you.

And with a neighbor's injury and now Dart is hurt and you can feel the momentum shifting over to the Chargers.

You got to give credit to the Giants

for finding a way to reverse that tide.

Dart goes to the locker room at halftime, comes out, and now he's not really limping anymore.

Who knows what happened there?

But I'll say this: like, Dart was fun.

He threw for 111 yards, right?

It wasn't like he lit up the scoreboard.

It was more like a gutty, fun effort.

It was that defensive front that we've talked about that is actually what's going to make the Giants go.

Abdul Carter, this is the guy that everyone sees as the superstar of the future, five QB hits in this game.

You also had Brian Burns, four QB hits in a sack.

Kayvon Thibodeau had a big play in this game, multiple plays they combined for 20 pressures per next gen stats and after the game Connor

Jim Harbaugh was like shit like my quarterback that I love I'm literally in love with my quarterback Justin Herbert I need to find a better way to protect him because he was getting savagely beaten in this game right I mean Joe alt going out now is is just another massive blow to this team.

And you don't know how many times that they can keep coming back from this.

But it's wild to think that if the Giants had gotten this defensive performance while playing with the lead against the Cowboys, you're talking about a team that's 500 going into a game against the New Orleans Saints next week.

And how different is life at that point?

And I don't know.

I mean, it's just something that's fascinating to think about.

But I mean, you can't, you can't put too much of this.

You can't internalize too much of it.

Yes, Jackson Dart was phenomenal.

The defense was phenomenal, but the Chargers

are just going through it.

I mean, they don't have an adequate offensive line now, and that's nobody's fault except for the injury gods.

Listen to this.

So, alt leaves, it's a high-ankle sprain.

Those things are tricky.

That could cost them anywhere from a week to three to four.

You never know.

His replacement, and remember, they lost Rashawn Slater, their all-pro left tackle to a season-ending injury this summer.

His replacement, Austin Dekulis, Dekulis,

according to next-gen stats, allowed six six pressures on 36-block blocking snaps.

No other lineman allowed more than four.

So he really struggled.

Now they're going to probably be looking on the scrap heap for some type of help or depth at that line if Alt has to miss time.

But, you know, not all was bad for the Chargers.

Omarion Hampton looked like a stud in this game.

128 yards and a touchdown and 37 receiving yards, a 54-yard rushing touchdown.

And I'm going to throw it to Connor.

Any last thoughts on this game before I throw it to Dart and his buddy after the game, which I really enjoyed?

Very quickly, but I'm just curious if you guys think that this is a bizarre take.

That I think that obviously you want Malik Neighbors, right?

But if you're a quarterback and you have a receiver who's talking about getting the ball, getting the ball, getting the ball, getting the ball, and is not happy when he's not getting the ball, is it not the worst thing to let him build organically?

And then you get Malik Neighbors back when you're a little bit more confident in who you are as a player and as an offense.

Like he was bringing out like Devin Singletary had big plays in this game.

You know, like all these little role players with Jackson Dart's mobility are just getting a little bit more involved.

I can't go there with you, dog.

It's not a bet.

It's not a good thing.

Well, here's one click.

Here's a comparison.

Like when Odell Beckham went to the Browns, everyone's like, oh, they're going to the Super Bowl.

Like he kind of didn't work in that offense.

And then it created like a big problem, obviously, with Baker.

And then suddenly Baker's out of there.

And then also he wasn't Odell Beckham anymore.

He wasn't the same guy that he was in his Giants heyday by the time he he got to the Browns.

Idea

is a

top 10, maybe even top five talented wide receiver that you're taking off the field in his second season after a fairly historic rookie year.

That's a tough one.

I understand that if he is doing like the Keyshawn Johnson 1996 stuff, Connor, where he's becoming a distraction and he's making life harder, but he's still so talented.

It's a stomach punch because you want these two guys.

Obviously, the future of Giants football, at least on that side of the ball, is those guys together.

That's how the Giants see it.

And now he's not going to be around until next summer.

And that's a tough one.

Yeah, and I want to just be clear because I can already, like,

I am not saying that it's better to not have Malik neighbors.

What I'm saying is that sometimes you have to find a silver lining and forcing Jackson Dart to become a more complete player without relying on one guy might not be the worst thing in the world.

All right,

here is Jackson Dart and Cam Scataboo

seconds after the game had concluded.

concluded.

Big blow.

What's going on, Big Blue?

Hey, it's 0-0-6 in a trap.

Big dubs.

Appreciate you guys for the support.

Wasn't easy, wasn't clean.

Found a way to win the game and pull out a big dub.

So appreciate you guys for your support.

Under the next week, can you picture that?

Oh, my God.

Uncle George is like, hey, did you see Scataboo the way he was talking?

Kind of sounded like that rapper, Eminem's.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like him talking like that.

Uncle George, I mean, you don't know his background or anything.

Just let him.

No, you sounded like Eminem's.

Yes, Uncle George.

All right, Uncle George.

But I didn't know Cam had that kind of flow to him.

That was interesting.

Can I hear it again?

I kind of could listen to Cam Scatterboo.

What's going on, Big Blue?

Hey, it's Flow 0 and 6 in a trap.

Big Dobbs.

This shit you guys.

Where's Cam Scatterboo from?

And pull out a big duck.

So appreciate you guys for your support.

Baby, where's Scataboo from?

That surprised me.

They're going to have so many endorsement deals with two of them.

Scataboo attended Rio Linda High School in Rio Linda, California.

Yeah, right?

I don't know where it is.

Not the answer you were expecting there.

Sounds like a wrap-up.

All right,

let's move on.

Let's head to Dublin, the Emerald Isle.

Ah, yes.

Listen, Aaron Rodgers can't sling it downfield like the old days, but he still is accurate.

And if you keep him upright, he can move an offense.

And especially if DK Metcalf Still got the juice in his legs.

The big play on a slant.

DK for 80.

The longest touchdown.

I like this.

We've been to several of these games.

The longest touchdown play in the International Series' history in the NFL.

It was the key play in a 24-21 win for the Steelers over the Vikings at Croke Park in Dublin on a beautiful day in Ireland.

The Steelers improved to 3-1 going into their bye week.

Mark, this game,

my theory that Now that NFL has all these financial holdings and all these business arrangements with so many different partners.

And maybe this arrangement's with Handsome Hank, our friend,

the grand pooba out there in Europe.

But the way the Steelers handled the end of this game to make this a 24-21 game with the Vikings having the ball, the chance to tie, it's like how I play, if I'm playing Madden with my eight-year-old and I'm beating him by three touchdowns and I'm like, all right, I want to make this close.

That's how this game was played.

But in reality, the Steelers really kind of manhandled the vikings for the better part of this contest it you made the comment i think over text dan that

it's it feels like every one of these games are going to mostly outside of like two a week they're all going to come down to the last couple of minutes even though if you look at what this game was the vikings with a banged up offensive line um

could not function for most of this game against a Steelers defense that has been like lamb-basted by people and it hasn't looked good, but seven sacks today.

You get that game-changing TJ Watt interception.

This happened a couple of times today.

Like tipped it then got his own interception.

And Carson Wentz, like the concept that Carson Wentz was going to turn into like a revive Joe Montana, I think was nullified today.

It had a lot to do with that offensive line being broken with backup guys and they were not the same.

But he threw two killer interceptions.

He had a like a fumble that like shot off forward and they got jumped on by the Steelers.

They just looked like a mess.

They just were not a good team until the end, like it all kind of turned around.

But from the Rodgers angle, I thought it was hopeful.

And it's continued to be true that the DK Metcalf and Rodgers chemistry really got this game going out of the gate.

They're working together well.

And Kenneth Gainwell has put on their best running performance of the year.

And if you can get all that together against a good Brian Flores defense, like that's kind of what impressed me the most was that they handled it early with big plays.

But then you're right.

The whole thing kind of of spun out of control at the end, and it was like 8-14 in LA.

And I was like, Am I still dreaming?

I don't know what's happening here at this point.

Dude, there are two awesome moments for Rogers in this game, by the way.

And he's like slowly becoming hilarious again to me after I didn't know what to think of him for a long time.

But before he threw that touchdown pass to DK Metcalf, like right before it, he rips a smelling salt and then flicks it behind him like a cigarette.

And then later on in that game, the Steelers are running the tush push, but he doesn't have the ball and he's just standing four yards backwards with his hands on his hips going, I'm not doing anything on this play and just signals the first down as they go forward.

I was like, this is amazing.

This is exactly what you want a 40-year-old to be having the time of his life out here.

They had an amazing camera angle for that like completely apathetic tush push moment, too.

I kind of think like maybe with Rodgers, because he is a megalomaniac, like he needed to beat the Jets.

Okay.

He did that.

And now he beat the Vikings, the team that he wanted to go to, and they didn't want him.

So he checks that box.

I don't really think he has anything left to accomplish now.

So I think he's so free and easy because

he's found peace.

He's beaten two of the teams that

he has

had to conquer, and he's done it.

He's already won a Super Bowl in a lot of ways.

Let's listen to Aaron Rodgers.

I felt like from the start it was going to be a little bit more pro-Steeler crowd, and the fans were amazing.

I've really enjoyed my time.

Again, I, you know, always want more.

I enjoy the Irish culture.

I did it partake in a few Guinness a couple nights ago, but hopefully there'll be a couple on the plane ride back, too.

He's having a fun time.

Aaron Rodgers, ladies and gentlemen, aren't we all happy for him?

You know, I thought that the

thrill.

That interview was like, oh.

Aww.

Did you guys notice something different

about this game

compared to other, like, the games in England?

Well, I thought this was the first time

because we've been to a bunch of them, right?

And it's usually, it's really a celebration of the NFL, and everybody wears their different jerseys.

Like, the Jaguars have put in endless resources and time trying to develop and be the team of London.

It's never happened, right?

But the Steelers have a natural connection to Ireland, and the Roonies, who's an ambassador to Ireland,

Rooney's father.

Which one was the ambassador?

I want to get the...

Was it Art?

Was the ambassador to Ireland?

Anyway.

We will search for that.

Thank you, Justin.

No, not hands up.

That's a quick Google for me, buddy.

But anyway, like...

He has your namesake.

Danny Rooney.

Danny Rooney.

Old Danny Rooney.

Old Danny Boy.

Like, the Steelers actually feel like they have a foothold in Ireland, and that was a big pro-Steelers crowd.

It felt like a Steelers home game.

It sounded like it.

Well, it was like, you're so right, because when you go to Wembley, it's

people have grown up collectively as fans of the league, and so it's dotted with jerseys from everywhere.

This had like terrible towels like all over the place.

I had a friend that went to, he went to Ireland for two weeks and went to this game, and like on his Instagram, all it was was major Steelers gatherings.

And it was like, you could tell this was going to be like the Steelers going to SoFi.

Like

it just had that feel to it.

Beautiful stadium from the lower, from the ground

camera angles where it looked out upon that more open side of it.

I thought it would just kind of cool.

Gorgeous.

We have to go.

Let's go next year.

Sure.

Let's go.

Hopefully, this becomes a regular thing.

And by the way, the Vikings now, they stay in Europe.

They get your brownies now in London next Sunday.

So good luck with that.

But yeah, if you're not going to, listen, and Jefferson, Justin Jefferson put up yardage and had catches in this game.

But if you're not going to be able to block for or have a sustained running game, Carson Wentz is just never going to work.

So I don't know what J.J.

McCarthy's status is, but

I don't know, man.

Tough sitch.

All right.

Oh, this is interesting, by the way, because you know, it's a little on my radar,

the next-gen stats, like top speed.

And it's like, well, if everyone's top speed is 21, it ceases to be interesting.

Isaiah Rogers, who had the, you know, arguably the greatest game ever on defense last week for the Vikings.

Can you throw this one up, Justin?

While chasing Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf, Vikings cornerback Isaiah Rogers reached 23.32 miles per hour, the fastest speed recorded since next-gen stats started in 2017.

23 is the new magic number, folks.

How about that?

You've been waiting for this.

I have been.

And we skipped 22 and went straight to 23.

One last thing, Joe Davis and Greg Olson talking about rugby.

I'm curious what you guys think about this.

Commissioner Goodell sitting with some Irish rugby players.

By the way, walking through Trinity College yesterday, I just happened upon a rugby game.

I was, my jaw dropped watching these dudes pummel each other.

No helmets, no pads.

Why don't you tell everybody what they told you they referred to American football?

I don't think I can use that word.

But yeah, they said it.

I was like, okay, yeah, fair.

I'm watching you guys do what you do.

Yes, sir.

This doesn't feel quite as tough.

What do you think it was?

I'm going to talk to my brother.

Probably referred to

when we were like if like a small cat, a newborn cat,

probably it was incorporated into it on some level.

It's pure bullocks.

Small cat ball, maybe is what they would have called it.

Yeah, that's probably something of that nature.

So Lord of Schite.

Maybe it was that.

I also feel like it's surprising to me that he's gone far.

in sports and hasn't is not familiar with rugby.

I feel like we've all watched rugby.

It's malarkey.

That's what it was.

It's not what it was.

That American football is malarkey.

I malarkey, that football is.

I do love like they have the like the infomer, like the we love NFL bits, and there's like the Irish fan who has like a Texan's shed in the back, and you just know that everybody else in that neighborhood is like, What the hell is wrong with you?

What is wrong with you?

Are you sick?

Are you mentally ill, sir?

There's not even a fan like this in houston i know what are we doing in cork

all right

up next we head to the big bell bottom

how about this the jaguars are three and one what why not

Parker Washington had the Jags first punt return touchdown in eight years.

And the Jacksonville defense got her done.

Four takeaways.

26-21 win over the Bumbling 49ers

who have their first loss of the season.

Gravy, by the way, why were Liam Cohen, Jag's coach, and San Francisco, D.C., Robert Sala fighting after the game?

They had to be separated.

What was that all about?

Juice.

I mean, we don't know the exact reason, but I think we can assume based on Robert Sala's comments earlier in the the week, which became a whole story that Cohen talked about and Shanahan talked about with regards to legal sign stealing.

And Sala was very, very careful in his comments to say that it is perfectly legal and everything they do is perfectly legal.

But

I'm pretty sure Shanahan said, we don't have to steal signs.

We can, you know, to paraphrase in the...

Connor, you wrote about this, right?

Oh my God, this was, I had the time of my life writing about this.

This was so up my alley that the night that it happened, Justin texted me and said, This is way up your alley.

And I was like, Justin, I've been working on this nonstop for the last seven hours.

I've already got 2,000 words written.

I sent it to him.

But so here's the background on this, okay?

Grant Yudinski, who is with Minnesota, Liam Cohen, took him to Jacksonville, just kind of has a really sophisticated way of combining DB hand signals, whatever you hear on TV tape, right?

Words that you hear on TV tape, and little other odds and ends, right?

And if you database all that stuff, you can really tell the story of a defense, of what they're going to do and how they're going to react to you, right?

And so, what's crazy is a lot of defensive coordinators don't change their hand signals because they can't because there's so many moving parts, there's so many players that are coming in and out of the lineup.

You have to keep your hand signals static.

So, some coaches have gone away from signaling altogether.

So, you have this moment, Robert Saul brings it up at the press conference, and it was a total non-sequitur.

He was like, the Jaguars are a good team, fast team, young team.

By the way, really sophisticated legal sign-stealing system, and then just starts getting into it.

And I called a bunch of coaches around the league, and I was like, why the hell would he do this?

This is an insane thing to do.

He's been a head coach.

He knows when he's making a story out of nothing being there.

And everybody said, and this is, I thought was fascinating, was he wants them to wonder whether he's going to change his signals.

He did it on purpose.

He wanted to put that in their head because Sala, other coaches told me, has very simple signals.

They're not as intricate as other defenses out there, right?

So you have this moment where he just says it out loud just to be like, yo, motherfucker, I know what you're doing.

Now try to take a guess of what I'm doing.

Obviously, it didn't work out, but I think the whole thing was just the best kind of NFL story.

Sounds like it was a bunch of malarkey.

All right, that's very interesting.

Wow, I love the game within the game, within the game.

So, but beside that, though, Justin,

tell us about this game because Brock Purdy was back, and the idea was that Brock Purdy at home, they were going to take care of business against

the Fred Durst, but they couldn't.

Yeah, this was a pretty sloppy game.

Actually, it was a painful watch.

The Niners turn it over four times.

Two of those Brock Purdy interceptions, one strip sack of Brock Purdy.

It was ugly.

The Jags on the other side just kept committing penalty after penalty.

They're like lined up to go for it on fourth and one at midfield.

False start.

They got to punt it away.

It was like, it was painful from that standpoint.

Parker Washington returned to punt for a touchdown.

That was huge.

That basically gave the Jags the separation it felt like they needed.

And then the Niners finally like woke up.

put a scoring drive together, looked like the Niners, then they had to do it one more time and they just couldn't do it.

That's when Purdy got strip sacked to end the game.

But it was a sloppy, sloppy mess.

I will say, Travis Hunter had a nice catch, like a 25-yard catch.

It was his longest catch of his career on like a third and 17 or something that was snapped from like the Jacksonville's own six-yard line or thereabouts that really got them out of a hole.

And then they ended up scoring a touchdown on that drive.

So huge play, huge contribution from Travis Hunter.

He didn't do a whole lot else.

The Niners have gone 11 straight games without an interception, which is an interesting stat.

In this game, they had three really good chances to end that streak.

Fred Warner had two that he just like balls were deflected and up in the air and he just couldn't find them and couldn't come down with them.

And they actually did get an interception.

Upton Stout, a rookie, picked off a target for Travis Hunter, but he was called for what I thought was a kind of a weak PI call where he maybe gave Hunter a little bit of a tug before he jumped and undercut the route.

I didn't agree with the call.

I was also rooting for San Francisco because I'm a Titans fan, so maybe that's why

the Jaguars

have

created at least three takeaways in all four games this season.

They already have more this season through four games than they had all of last season.

If you ever want to like turnover is kind of fluky, like look at the 2024 versus 25 Jaguars.

So the fact that if you're getting at least three games and they got four today, that's how you win three out of four games.

That's a lot of short fields.

That's a lot of short-circuited drives by the opposition.

And even though they have not been perfect, I feel like the Jaguars are pretty unimpressive in terms of three-in-one teams in our league right now.

Like they're taking advantage of the miscues, and they're in a good spot right now in the South.

Can I ask a question, Justin?

Like, I looked up at this game, and at one point, Because I think Juwan Jennings is just money.

I think he's a great receiver, and he looked to be in deep pain.

And then Ricky Pearsall also was hurt at one point.

Did anything severe happen there?

Yeah, Pearsall was quite...

They were both questionable coming into the game, both expected to play and did play.

Pearsall felt like was just walking around or on a bike for all of the second half.

Like, I think whatever injury he's dealing with was not, you know, working so far.

He started fast.

As a Pearsall fantasy owner, he was like four for 49 late in the first quarter.

I'm like, oh, he's cooking.

And then he just stayed there.

I wondered if he even finished the game.

Was he on the field in this game?

No, yeah.

I think he was on the sideline for almost the entire, maybe the entire second half.

They missed him, too, because Juwen Jennings was toughing it out warrior style.

I mean, he was putting his body on the line, taking huge shots and playing through it.

Demarcus Robinson got in this game.

He's been suspended until this game and had a really nice catch on, I think it was what became the Niners' touchdown drive, or maybe that was their last drive where they ended up losing.

But I feel like they need these guys to be healthy because the run game is struggling right now.

They averaged 3.5 yards per carry in this game, only 83 rushing yards.

I think it was, they are, did they, they didn't have a rushing touchdown in this game.

Did they?

That would make them the only team still in the NFL without a rushing touchdown, which when you have Christian McCaffrey and Kyle Shanahan as your coordinator, like the run game's supposed to be the thing you can always count on.

And how many times have we said Kyle Shanahan can take any seventh-round running back and make him a fantasy star?

It's just not working right now.

And I think they miss, obviously, Brandon Ayuk, and who knows when he'll be healthy.

Like, Debo Samuel, they could use a guy like that right about now.

Or Jordan Mason, who they weirdly traded away.

Although Brian Robinson and McCaffrey, like, they pop, it was funny because it felt like every time Sanchez or whoever would say, like, man, the Niners have been struggling with the run game this year, then bang, McCaffrey would pop like a nine-yard run up the middle, but those were too few and far between.

I mean, his long on the day was 11.

He averaged less than three yards a carry in this game.

We're now, you know, we're deep enough in the season where

you can start asking questions.

He's got 69 carries this year, he's averaging 3.3 yards.

Now, he's still like in the receiving game, six for 92 and a touchdown, and he had a nice little shimmy there to get into the end zone.

So it's not like is Christian McCaffrey not good anymore, but you know, we're almost into October now, and their running game has been bad.

So keep an eye on that.

And all right, let's keep moving on.

Let's head to to Atlanta.

All right, exhale, Falcons fans, because Michael Pennix

got back on track in week four.

He threw for a career high, 313 yards, 20 of 26, two touchdown passes,

435 yards the Falcons put out.

put up and a 34-27 win over a commanders team that's just

no Terry McLaurin.

Obviously, no Jaden Daniels.

Just missing a lot of guys right now, and it's just not the team.

Like, I can't get crazy about the commanders at this juncture because we're just not seeing the commanders that we thought we were going to see.

But keep an eye on all that.

But yeah, to me, this game was about, Mark, your Falcons finding...

Finding the juice after a really embarrassing shutout loss last week to a very bad Panthers team.

And what do you know?

Like, Pennex being able to pass downfield, he was much more true with his accuracy, and then making Bijan Robinson the focal point, a career high 181 yards from scrimmage,

including a beautiful 14-yard touchdown run, four catches for 106 yards.

I mean, that's the offense.

That's the dude you go through.

And when you do, they're going to look a lot better.

Yeah, it's...

This was the vision that it's been so frustrating to wait for under the previous coaching staff and with this one too.

But Drake London

went off today.

B.

John Robinson and Kyle Pitts, they all scored for the first time in a game together.

Like you thought that would have happened in various formats before.

It was, Pennix looked, he looked much more like the player that excited me in the three games from a year ago.

To go get wiped out the way that you did a week ago and go play what you'd think is a better team,

it was really important for the quarterback, but everyone around him to come back in here and just say, bury that ball that last week and come out and be like the atlanta falcons we can be and like but they're one of these teams where it's like it's almost inexplicable what happened a week ago and then you look at this there's this sort of middle team where i'm like i don't trust what you're going to do next week at all i need to see a string of it strings of games because it's not they're a weird one

yeah

he was he did look a little bit more confident to me penix though like he was pulling the trigger a little bit early but he still had that thing it was i thought it should have been a pick on that first scoring drive that they had, where it was almost the exact same thing he did against Carolina, where it's, you just kind of short hop a little bit, and then you just like under throw a ball that almost got picked.

And so, I don't know, it's just still, like, I, I, like you said, I can't get fully behind it yet.

I don't know.

Well, you know, at the very least, because I and many others got after the Falcons coaching staff, Zach Robinson, the OC, Raheem Morris, obviously the head coach, they did a nice job here resetting after last week because it really did look like a very different team in the offense and obviously the coaching of the quarterback to

move past what was a really humbling effort.

So

from that standpoint,

I think it was a very good day for the Falcons.

But at the same time, I just want, to keep it in perspective, this is not the Washington.

I mean, beating, you should beat Marcus Mariota's Washington Commanders in your building if you're even a whiff of a playoff contender.

So it's a take-care of business game, but considering what happened last week, it's a big one, and we just wait for Jaden Daniels to come back.

Let me take a look at this commander schedule real quick.

So, yeah, I mean, they go to Los Angeles to face the Chargers next week.

So, it's like you hope that he's healthy and that game has some juice to it because if not, the Chargers are going to eat Mariota alive.

And one little thing, it's not a great look if you're fired Falcons

wide receivers coach Ike Hilliard, who was dinged for not having better details in the wide receiver room.

And

days later, that room explodes.

So, I mean, it's...

Or

we could give credit to TJ Yates, who's one of the great receiver minds of our time.

You could.

That perhaps if TJ Yates would have been a crafty kind of Phil McConkey type out of the slot in his career.

I understand, Mike Jones.

Maybe, maybe, just maybe, he would have had a different pro career.

So shout out to TJ Yates.

Good note.

All right.

Let's move.

Up next, we go to

New England.

The Patriots.

They're a tough team to figure out, huh?

Who the hell are the Patriots, you know?

Much less the Panthers.

Well, I mean, you know, the Panthers.

Here's the thing about the Patriots.

They're a lot of, they're exciting.

Sometimes they'll trip on their own balls and ruin a game, and they've done that a couple times.

But then they've also had really fun, exciting performances from the quarterback.

And then on Sunday, just a full team-wide

explosion here.

Marcus Jones had an 87-yard punt return for a touchdown.

Drake May had two touchdown passes, ran for another.

Even did the Superman celebration.

He said Cam Newton was his favorite player growing up.

I wonder if we watched Super Bowl 50.

42-13

over the Panthers from Super Bowl 50.

Connor, you know what I mean with the Patriots?

Because they've had some really, they had that bad loss of the Raiders at home in week one where they were flat.

And then they have the five turnovers against the Steelers, even though they almost outgamed them two to one.

So it's like, should have won that game.

They had a nice week two game, and then they absolutely destroy a team.

Is this a good team that's just figuring it out?

I think it's an all-right team.

And this one got out of control quickly for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it's the Panthers, right?

So you have to take everything in the proper perspective.

They gave up an opening touchdown drive to Carolina.

They were trailing in this game.

And then they had the first of what were two phenomenal returns from Marcus Jones.

He scored on a really long punt return and then had another later in the game where he was tripped by the punter, but he set a franchise record for punt return yards in this game.

And so you can sit there and ask yourself, now that first punt return started a string of, what, 42 unanswered points for the Patriots.

But Carolina, I mean, it's a mess.

They had a practice squad guard in this game, and then they had a backup center that they had to move to guard because they were going to do something else with them.

And this team is just kind of like shoveling bodies onto the field to try to help Bryce Young.

Bryce Young, not helping himself either, got benched in the third quarter for Andy Dalton.

He's going to remain the starter, but

this is not going well.

I mean, whenever Dave Canalis, the head coach of the Carolina Panthers, is being asked about effort after the game, and on my sliding scale of a coach about to get in trouble,

the serial questioning of effort is always number one.

That's when everything starts to really warm up on the burner.

So,

when it becomes a talking point whether they're quitting on the coach.

Yes.

Not good.

Never good.

Never good.

Yeah, and I, you know, this is a, yeah, this, the Bryce Young of it all is, you know, this is a big quarterback draft class we're hearing in 26.

So it's, this is probably, if they don't find a way to, to get steady play from him, they'll probably move on, I would think, and be in the market for a quarterback.

So, you know, this is a big development period for them.

But, you know, they're so close, Connor.

I mean,

seven days ago, they're shutting out a division rival, and you're like, oh, maybe there's something here.

This was a big step back.

It was a big step back.

And I mean,

there just wasn't a ton to write home about about this team.

I mean, it was a couple of good drives and then just a complete cutting off of the fire hose.

And New England, I mean, everybody had a day.

Like, Stefan Diggs had 100 receiving yards in this one, you know?

Ramondre Stevens and Trayvion Henderson, they both had over four yards of carry and they're not doing anything particularly well, Carolina.

And so Dave Canalis has talked about he's going to hold on to play calling.

He's not going to pass it off to Brad Idzik, who's his offensive coordinator.

So this is another coaching question.

That's another one.

And two more points on the Patriots' defensive side of things.

Cornerback Christian Gonzalez made his debut, finished with three tackles in the game.

He had a hamstring injury that was really lingering.

And this is something that popped up after our last show of the week.

Terrell Williams, defensive coordinator of the Patriots, the team recently announced he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The team wore T-strong shirts during warm-ups to support Williams and Vrabel set up to the game that the 51-year-old would be around the team as much as possible and is in the process of undergoing treatment and meeting with specialists.

And obviously, cancer is a terrible thing and something that affected us.

And everyone is affected by cancer, but you know, Chris Wesling, we lost.

And so we send our best wishes to Terrell Williams as he beats cancer, as we know he can.

All right, let's take a break

and we roll on.

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The family that vacations together stays together.

At least, that was the plan.

Except now, the dastardly desk clerk is saying he can't confirm your connecting rooms.

Wait, what?

That's right, ma'am.

You have rooms 201 and 709.

No, we cannot be five floors away from our kids.

The doors have double locks, they'll be fine.

When you want connecting rooms confirmed before you arrive, it matters where you stay.

Welcome to Hilton.

I see your connecting rooms are already confirmed.

Hilton, for this day.

All right, we are back.

Let's head to

the desert.

You know, the Raiders, by the way,

you know, it's their home stadium.

There's like 50,000 Bears fans at this game.

I guess that's the new NFL.

Everybody travels these days.

I'm not going anywhere.

I'm in this converted garage all the time.

Should be drinking Guinness somewhere right now in Europe.

But that's how we do it, Mark.

We are faithful to the gig.

Yeah,

you know, I sit in this chair literally 24-7.

They just put

a black kind of cape over me when the computer turns off.

So, no.

I'm an animatronic football analyst.

I like that.

Anyway, listen, the Raiders had a chance.

Daniel Carlson lining up for the field goal 25-24 seconds to go in the game, but Josh Blackwell gets his hand on the field goal, attempt to flex it.

That block was the difference in a 25-24 win for the Bears.

Comeback win for the Bears in a very sloppy game.

Both teams.

I don't know.

I know the Bears fans are coming out of this.

They're coming out of this feeling good.

We've won two straight.

We've course corrected after an ugly start to the season, but man.

This team makes a lot of mistakes

and

they're just too sloppy for me to buy into right now.

But to their credit, they did steal this one from the Raiders and

a game in which Max Crosby, for large stretches of this game, looked like he was going to single-handedly ensure that the Raiders would send all those Bears fans back to their hotel rooms and to the airport, bummed out.

It didn't happen.

Chicago had four takeaways for the second game in a row.

And that was enough to make up for a pretty shitty Caleb Williams game and Ben Johnson, the offense, not so hot, just 271 yards, just 69 yards on the ground.

But when you're playing a Raiders team that's pretty flawed itself, somebody had a win, and the Bears won this game.

It's almost as if Tom Brady's trade secrets aren't enough to lift the Raiders to glory just yet.

It also is not enough when...

Geno Smith, a figure of suspicion, is an interception robot early on in this game because it was close, even with all the mistakes the Raiders made, because I think there was a fumble as well, and Kevin Byard's picking off two passes.

You can't function if you get the version of Geno Smith where he's costing you possessions like this, because he wasn't doing that with Pete Carroll in Seattle.

It wasn't the way he was.

It's like the reason that Pete Carroll fell in love with him and brought him to Las Vegas was because there was clean play and also

fairly accurate and dangerous downfield passing.

Like Like in this game, it was just watching a disaster unfold, and you're not going to win many games if

that's the Geno Smith you get.

To use the Connor line, if you injected the Raiders with truth serum,

they would tell you this is not who they were expecting.

This is not the Geno Smith they were expecting.

They were expecting to get the Geno Smith who had matured as a quarterback.

And yes, he's always going to put a couple balls up for grabs, but that's because he's an aggressive downfield passer.

But we've gotten more like the pre-C Seattle version of Geno, and that's not going to be good enough with this offense.

It's just not.

Now, I'll just you a little bit positive here that Ashton Genty,

who's had a very frustrating start to his NFL career, and I didn't think a lot of that was his fault because this offensive line has just been bad, and he's been getting swallowed up in the backfield as soon as he touches the ball.

Well, he got a little space in this game, and what happens?

He goes 21 for 138,

21 carries.

He has 138 total yards.

He has two receiving touchdowns and a rushing score.

The first Raiders rookie since Bo Jackson.

Whenever it's the first since Bo Jackson,

that's a good day for the kid.

So

Genty is a bright spot for this team.

But yeah, Gino's got to clean it up, and the Bears just need to be more consistent.

They even tried, you know what they tried?

You know what they tried, Connor?

Ben Johnson broke out the shit, what's the play call?

Stumble bum.

Stumble bum, which is a great name for a play call.

It worked, obviously, like gangbusters for a touchdown on the Lions last year with Jared Goff, where he pretends like it's like an errant throw or like he takes the snap and then pretends like he trips, right?

Yeah, and the ball like raises the.

I'm sure maybe you wrote a column about this, Connor, so you could probably explain it better than me, but he trips and it makes it feel like it's a broken play.

The defense kind of relaxes for a moment and then he quickly recovers and drills a receiver for a touchdown.

They try that, but maybe just like a sign of the difference in Ben Johnson's life now.

With the Bears, it's a flop.

It doesn't work at all um so they just got to clean it up but they got the win give them the credit they found a way you wonder if caleb williams is like you know like your four-year-old that's like can i try that can i try that can i try that and it's like no dad's not going to call it for a reason you know and then okay fine you know you see how it works or it's like if you have a

you get you break up with someone and then in your next like early dating life, you keep going to the same places you used to go to with the last person.

It doesn't feel right.

Like, we're going to try to duplicate all the Jared Goff stuff with you, and we're all just reminded of Jared Goff.

Tyreek Stevenson, by the way, got banged up in this game.

When he left with an injury, the Bears were missing their top five cornerbacks.

Five?

Wow.

That's a problem.

I mean, you could survive when Geno Smith is throwing the ball for grabs, but in general, this isn't good because Kyler Gordon, he's been out with a hamstring.

Jalen Johnson had the core surgery.

Nick McLeod,

he had a head injury in this game.

Now, Stevenson's out.

It's not what you want, as Joe Girardi would say.

And

maybe Stumble Bum will work another time, but not today.

All right.

Let's head to Houston.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh.

Yikes.

Somebody's cranky.

The producer.

Yes, the Houston Texans had an easy time of it against the woebegone Tennessee Tytoons.

6-0 at the half, but they scored 20 points in the fourth quarter and Cruz to a 26-0 win.

It is the first shutout for Houston in nearly 15

years.

And

for the Titans, it's just more of the same, just absolute misery.

So

C.J.

Stroud throws her 233 yards and two touchdowns.

Like I said,

three Houston touchdowns in the fourth quarter to break it open.

And Cam Ward and the Titans offense, remember they changed the play caller.

And what does it create?

Well, Cam Ward, 10 for 26, 108 yards, averaging

4.2 yards per attempt.

And I'm afraid to even look at this gravy as I threw it to you, but let's see the total yards.

175 total yards for the Titans, who are the worst team in football.

And with that said, we now turn it over to Justin for the latest episode of Go Off, King.

It's time to fire him.

You just said it.

They're the worst team in the league.

They're not even competitive.

I wouldn't say the Texans had an easy time with this.

By the way, you mentioned 20 points in the fourth quarter.

They had an easy time in the fourth quarter.

The Texans are also not.

team, which is just makes this all the more frustrating that the Titans

lose by 26 points without scoring a point.

Yeah, the play color change didn't do a whole lot.

The Titans whipped out a couple of trick plays, tried to run a flea flicker.

Cam Ward almost got sacked, had to like dirt it.

Could have, it was questionable if it was a pass or a fumble.

And then they tried some weird like reverse flea flicker where wide receiver Chimera DK was supposed to throw it back across the field, but he just had to eat it and take a loss because it wasn't there.

And both of those calls came like when the Titans offense got a tiny bit of momentum and then they just pull out the trick play gadget bullshit and it just goes to shit.

Which, you know, we've seen coordinators do that all the time where they just get too cute.

But

I think the only thing I really have left to say is Brian Callahan's got to go.

There's no benefit to keeping him.

The Titans have gotten worse every week.

They lost by eight, then they lost by 14, then they lost by 20.

Now they, or 21, now they lose by 26.

They get worse as the game goes on.

They're the worst fourth quarter team in terms of point differential dating back to week week one of last year.

It is a disgrace.

It is a circus.

Nod to the music.

And it's just

like, you got to get Cam Ward away from this coach before he's ruined.

The coaching is so bad in the league.

It makes me wonder if Will Levis is actually a serviceable quarterback for somebody else at some point in his career because he regressed from what he looked like under Mike Vrabel all of last season, and obviously he was not good, but Cam Ward is also regressing now.

This was his worst game yet.

Yeah.

On the Texans side, wait, just let's pause there for one second.

Sure, because

here's the other problem for the Titans, or if you're Brian Callahan,

not only are you in the midst of the greatest professional struggle of your life, you have your dream job, you're a head coach in the NFL, but you have a bullseye on your chest right now,

and you have that

Kaharski on the beat.

That's just he is, Kaharski is, he is asking the questions that Callahan does not want to hear on a weekly basis.

Give Kaharski credit for this because somebody's got to ask these questions, right?

But

we are getting very close to a physical altercation between the head coach of the Titans and your boy, Koharski.

Let's check out the latest edition of Koharski v.

Callahan

post-game presser.

Do you think this is a resilient and relentless football team?

I know what you're doing there, Paul.

I know what you're doing.

And I'm not going to answer that shit right now.

You're 20-some games in.

I'm going to just compose myself here before I say something I regret.

But yes, I think this team is resilient.

I think it is relentless.

We haven't played good enough football.

And I think those are two very distinct, different things.

We have to execute it better.

We have to coach better.

What a ballbuster.

What a major league ballbuster, this Kaharsky is.

That's a good question.

Do you know why?

Just a little context on that, because after, I think, week one, or at some point earlier in the season, Connor could, Justin could tell us.

But

Callahan referred to his Titans as resilient and relentless.

So what Callahan is saying there to Kaharski is, I know what you're doing.

I'm down right now.

And now you're going to take these words and kind of throw them back in my face to make this even worse for me.

You're not going to let me off the hook.

You're going to let me just die on the line here and i want to kill you

relentlessly unwatchable this was your corpse by the way

that's what i said

i said that's what i said at the top of the show and you said no right am i crazy

well i meant that it no it is this is the core this is the corpse that i pointed to what was the misunderstanding there justin didn't Didn't I say it was it was Justin's team or whatever?

Yeah, you said it was part of our go off king segment, which perhaps Mark just didn't.

Are you not aware of Go Off King, Mark?

That's one of our linchpin segments on the Sunday night show?

No, I am.

I think

it might have passed by me on that one.

All right, on the Texans side, before we move on, because, yes, let's get out of the AFC South as soon as possible.

Yeah, so the Texans, you know, they have this rookie running back, Woody Marks, they're super excited about.

They finally turned the reins over to him in this game, and he goes off for 17 carries for 69 yards and a touchdown, four catches for 50 yards and a a touchdown.

If you play fantasy football and Woody Marks is on your waiver wire, go pick him up.

But, you know, C.J.

Stroud has struggled all year, right?

He goes 22 of 28 for 233 and two touchdowns in this game.

Only sacked twice.

This is just a reflection, though, of how bad.

the opponent they faced was.

The Titans have no pass rush juice.

In fact, Jeffrey Simmons is the only player worth a damn on that defense, had the fastest sack of the last two seasons in this game.

Crazy.

Ripped through the line and swallowed up CJ Stroud in like just over two seconds.

So that was a cool play.

But other than that, like the Texans' offense finally started going a little bit.

They convert a second and 33 with a 37-yard pass to Nico Collins.

Later in the game, they convert a third and 17 with Woody Marks making a play.

So

it's something they can build on.

But again, it's like what we talked about with every team the Titans have played so far.

It's like, do you really learn a lot when you're going up against a JV squad?

No.

Let's give the final word to zero star star

Cam Mord

coming to Tubai and a decade to be named later,

who's, you know, the number one overall pick.

He's going through it, and he's keeping it real with the media afterwards.

Ass.

I mean, we're keeping a buck right now.

We ask.

So we owing for it.

We have, this point, we got nothing to lose.

We dropped a quarter of our fing games, and we've yet to do anything.

So we have to lock in.

Especially myself.

I just want to win.

When was the last time Tennessee won?

I don't know.

Jeez.

I'm trying to win.

Jeez, that's rough.

10 straight losses, if anyone was wondering.

I kind of like him saying that.

Me too.

I mean, and I hope the owner

is it and is like, you know what?

He's right.

We got to get this coach out of here.

Yeah, I would think we're going to do a show on Monday night, Sessler and I, and I wonder if he's still the head coach.

I think it's reached that level, obviously.

And next time we have a bad show, doesn't happen really, but we will be sure to send Sessler out there to make the statement.

We keep it at bunk, we ask.

If we keep it in a bucket, if we're keeping it a buck.

We keep it at a buck?

Yeah, it's like 100%.

100, yeah.

Oh, that's a good one.

For keeping it real.

That one hadn't made it to the Hans House, so you're not allowed.

We'll make that other one

our phrase if we want.

Did you say keeping it bunk or something?

Yeah, we probably keep it.

Jim Wyatt could do that.

Tweeted it out, tried to tweet out this quote and wrote, Jim Wyatt, Titan Steam Reporter, and wrote, if we keep it a book.

So he also did not know the

phrase.

But he's like 64 years old, probably.

I'll work.

I'll be better.

I'll be better.

I was ass.

I was ass.

I'll keep it buck.

I was ass there.

All right.

Sorry, Justin.

It sucks.

Been there.

Yeah.

It's not fun.

All right.

Next up.

Yes.

Okay, good.

Yes.

I mean, there's a chance that the Jets, Titans, and Browns could be 1-2-3 in the draft.

I mean, we should throw a f ⁇ ing party, a pity party, but a party if that happens.

Speaking of the Browns.

All right, here was the big test.

Here was the big test.

That great Browns defense against the best offense in football, arguably, the Lions, at Ford Field.

How would the Browns fare?

I mean they weren't outclassed but they weren't close to victory.

Jared Goff threw two touchdown passes to Amon Ross St.

Brown.

Cleve Raymond returned to punt 65 yards for another touchdown.

The Lions eased past the Browns 34 to 10.

Goff through for just 168 yards.

But crucially, and we talked about this, Connor,

heading into this game.

The Browns had been lethal their front on defense.

Then the Lions offensive line had been the best in football.

Jared Goff sacked zero times in this game.

Yeah,

this was a strange one.

The Detroit Lions offense started out with a quick four-play drive.

Cleveland comes back with a 13-play, 88-yard touchdown drive.

Quitchon Judkins punches the ball in, and you're thinking to yourself, dear God, it's happening again.

And then after that, just all Lions all the time, they looked flawless.

Monrost St.

Brown with a big gain.

Then the Browns get called for tripping.

And then there's a touchdown.

And two Joe Flacco picks that were not his fault at all.

But now there's this narrative that, like, and even I thought it in real time.

I was like, this guy's trying to get himself pulled out of this game.

Like, it's just like almost like, you know, volunteering himself for a rest.

But I...

When I looked at them again, one was just a phenomenal play by DJ Reed.

The other one was clearly a miscommunication.

We did see Dylan Gabriel in this game.

Funny stat.

I think he was 0 for 1 passing and managed to finish with a higher passer rating than Joe Flacco in this one.

They cannot survive with those picks, no matter whose fault they are.

A fumble, and they seem to dot every game with like a killer missed field goal that kind of throws things sideways.

And

I was watching this pretty closely and the score is indicative of what the game was, but Cleveland was hanging around for a while in this.

But you just, you're too imbalanced a team.

You can't ask that defense to do that 16 quarters in a row.

And they played a much different offense this week that just at home powered right through them.

Miles Garrett did not make game-changing plays despite some solid pressure in this.

And he's like, you need him to be your quarterback, basically.

And that's why we do what we do on He the Call, where we all divvy up these games and we all watch them.

So you don't just look at the box score and say, oh, look at Flacco throwing all these picks.

So Connor gives you the background that maybe those picks weren't his fault.

But on the other side of it, I wonder if there's conversations that are going to start percolating just because, I mean, you look at the four weeks for the Browns, right?

16 points, 17 points, 10 points, 10 points.

That's just not enough.

Like, the offense is not scoring enough points to win football games in our league.

And I just wonder if

Stefansky is going to start getting, now he doesn't have the immense pressure from the fan base slash

potentially the front office to get a shiny first-round pick in the lineup, like what happened with Dable.

They have a third-round pick back there.

They have obviously a very much valuehood fifth-round pick in Sanders.

I wonder how much longer Flacco starts if they continue to

average less than 300 total yards a game and score less than 20 points every single week.

They're just not going to win this way.

Like, what's the purpose of this season?

If you want to be patient with the the Cleveland Browns, even as a fan, and say, here's what we're using this season for, realistically, you're winning three or four games tops, right?

So what is the point of Joe Flacco?

I mean, last week was really nice, but why is he in there if you've got two young players to take a look at?

I feel like it's got to happen pretty soon in a relentlessly terrible schedule, but

why wait on that?

On the Lions front, Aiden Hutchinson had a scary moment, popped up.

It was a monster in this game, two sacks, but I think everybody's collective breath was held there for a second when he went down.

And the Lions are definitely banged up at the cornerback position.

I mean, they lost their top two corners in this game.

I think as of right now, when I checked before we started taping this, that everyone's eventually going to be okay and eventually going to come back.

But even their second, you know, their second string punt returner is, or returner is returning touchdowns for scores in this game.

And so I think it does showcase that this team is still incredibly deep and incredibly talented.

And again, to the credit of the Browns defense, they didn't get to golf in this game, but the Lions still had 277 yards of total offense.

Like,

that is not Browns-like.

So, I mean, not Lions-like.

So, the guts of a competitive weekly team as they are with Cleveland, if they could just score an extra touchdown a week.

Now, can they do that with Flacco?

That's the decision that Stefanski has to make.

All right.

Congratulations, by the way, Justin.

You looked into the mirror.

You had to cover 21 points of wood, and you did it.

Yeah.

The lock competition heating up on heed the call.

All right, one more game before.

Oh,

what?

Let's rewind it a handful of games and just.

Come on, Justin.

We got to be on top of the lock competition, Gravy.

I need a system.

I'm going to develop a system, and this will not.

Mark my words.

This will not happen.

what locked did what who didn't lock connor locked the 49ers who failed to come back and win against the jacksonville jaguars you know what would help our producer can i be real guys maybe some ownership of our locks maybe we bring them up ourselves

i failed connor i like connor or saying i failed today i i supported the 49ers and i was wrong

and

this is inside a competition where you um have me listed we're all tied and you have me as fourth place.

So I'll

take the

now, Connor

is fourth place.

And Dan, to your credit, you actually did mention that you've got your luck right when we were on the Rams Colts game.

That definitely helped me.

So, yeah, yeah, look at that.

It helps.

Thank you.

Oh, we have developing news.

The Super Bowl 60 halftime show has been announced.

I'm going to keep it buck here.

Nailed it.

A buck.

Shit.

No, it's Bad Bunny.

That checks out.

He's fing huge.

Are you familiar with Bad Bunny's work?

Anybody?

I mean, to somebody else.

I'm familiar with his work in Happy Gilmore 2.

He was.

He's a good, he's actually a surprisingly deft comic actor.

I've seen him in a couple things.

He's done SNL and showed up on

some of their sketches over there, the Please Don't Destroy Guys.

He had the honey, putting the honey all over Travis Kelsey and Happy Gilmore 2.

Really, the only part of the film that I enjoyed.

But he's also known.

This is good for you, Mark, for casual conversation with all the people.

I know of him, by the way.

I do know him.

When you're hanging out with all the youngsters in Hollywood, sure.

Like, oh, yeah, that's the king of Latin trap.

Big bunny.

I'm going to write that down.

He's Puerto Rican rapper, singer, and record producer, and he's massive.

Like this guy, he's like one of those dudes that, like, you might not be overly familiar with him, but he could play like five nights at SoFi Stadium.

Like, one of those dudes.

So, or the Super Bowl checks out.

I know, Connor, you were probably hoping for a little John Fogarty, maybe a Bob Seeger.

89.

You know, I was just not hoping for, and I actually wrote about this back in May.

I was just hoping not for a medley of popular country, new country artists.

Oh, yeah, we dodged a bullet there.

I know.

We really

did.

Yeah.

It's everywhere.

It's completely overwhelmed the culture.

So you're right.

Let's count our blessings.

Even if you're not a bad bunny fan,

at least it's not that.

Unless you're a country fan, and then you're probably, who cares?

All right.

Two more games.

Let's head to Buffalo, the game that we expected to to be the gnarly blowout of the week, but not quite.

All right, Josh Allen throws two touchdown passes.

He runs for a score, so the typical Josh Allen three touchdown performance.

And the Bills, despite,

you know, again, not really playing at their highest level, they didn't have to because they have enough talent, and when they're playing the opponent that is not up to their level or close to it, they could easily win games even when they don't play at a high level.

In this this case, that's what they did.

31-19

over the Saints.

Another big game for James Cook, Mark, who went for 117 rushing in a touchdown.

He's been great all season, but yeah, the Bills take care of business game, even if they didn't cover that massive spread.

Cook looks physically dominant.

He is

such a powerful weapon for them on the ground and really balances them out.

He took over drives in this game when it mattered most.

I I want to give the Saints some credit, though, because they lose week one by a touchdown.

They lost, I think, by five points in week two to the Niners.

You got blown your doors blown off by Seattle.

The defense today gave the Bills a lot of problems.

They gave them, this was like, it wasn't like you didn't think the Saints are going to win, but they're hanging around.

And

there was a stretch here where the Bills had a...

They opened with a couple touchdowns, then interception, punt, punt, and then

another failed drive where they're taken taken out on downs and it's like this it was the fewest yards they had in a quarter in a calendar year in quarter two and it's like it looked like that way like brandon staley's defense like really really made a difference here and uh it looked like it and the bills had to work their way out of it and they did spencer rattler gave buffaloes defense some problems with his feet i mean he he's not you know i don't think he's the future there on any level but he can make plays and they really were hanging around alvin kamara too so you're just sort of waiting there for the bills to explode because from the other angle angle, like this was not a great Bills performance, and they still put up 31 points.

I mean, this is Ellen Moore.

The Ellen Moore.

They're up 21-19 with a little over seven minutes to go before Allen hits Kincaid to essentially put the game away.

But honestly, not anything we were expecting in this game.

So, yeah, you give the Saints a little bit of credit, but at the end of the day, the Bills 4-0 for the 10th time in team history.

The Saints 0-4 for the 9th time in team history.

So these are two teams, obviously, in very different places.

Anything else from this game, Mark?

A.J.

Elliot Wanessa

had a great game.

I mean, there's just players on this defense that step up each week.

The one other visual note, because you know how they've got this punter, Cameron Johnston, the Bills, who looks just like Sean McDermott?

Well, he got whacked in this game and took his helmet off.

And I'm just like, it looks like,

as they're saying out there, it's so true.

It's like, it's either Sean McDermott, Cameron Johnston, or Bill Burr.

From a distance, looks like it's all three of them.

Yeah, that is, it's dead on.

He got whacked though on a roughing the punter.

And like I thought, oh, this guy might be out for the for the year, but he he was seen walking around after that and hung around.

Okay.

Very good.

Yeah, because they didn't look overly dominant, the Bills against the Dolphins on Thursday night.

And this game, they kind of just, you know, it might be one of those things, Connor, right, where it's

you're a team that you know, you look at your division and you look at some of of these opponents, like, I know we're going to win this game, but it's hard for me to get all the way up for some of these games when I know I can win at 60%.

So it's almost like just the grind of getting to that 13 and 4, 14 and 3 to get to January.

They're one of those teams, which is kind of a tough place to be, but also a place a lot of teams would love to be.

I mean, there were so many of these little, like these fun.

simulated pressure things that they were throwing at Spencer Rattler.

And, you know, Mark nailed it where like Rattler is like sticking the ball forward while running like like Woody Woodpecker to get out of the fray and is picking up first downs and they just all have to be on the sideline like we know what's going to happen we know they're going to beat this team like why is he just allowed to continue to do that it's just annoying one little note spencer rattler and tyler shock it was both of their birthdays today i don't know if i've ever encountered that with a starting and backup deep in the grab bag of notes now huh well i'm seeing it here was in a pinkish font

Ellen Moore.

Happy birthday, everyone.

Ellen Moore.

Ellen Moore.

Ellen Moore.

Ellen Moore.

Who else's birthday was it today, Mark?

Ellen Moore.

I can't confirm that.

Ellen Moore.

Ellen Moore.

All right.

To Sunday night football.

Ellen Moore.

They call it

kissing your sister.

She's nice.

We all love our sisters.

But not on Sunday night football.

The Cowboys and Packers go back and forth for four quarters and then an entire overtime period.

Each team getting the ball once in the extra period after a dramatic second half.

each team kicking a field goal the Packers almost having a

time boner

of

the century almost run out the clock in their last play before Brendan McManus came out but he does pipe it as time expires and overtime final score 40 40

kissing your sister, Ceci.

We're going to take this home.

Connor's on deadline writing up a Micah Parsons piece.

Maybe it's a Micah Parsons missing persons

bulletin.

I think it could be.

The game became about something else, even though we kept focusing camera-wise on Parsons.

But he really, he had the one

takedown late that saved a touchdown, that saved what would have been a Dak Prescott touchdown.

So that affected the game.

It became about these two quarterbacks and these offenses.

Like,

their numbers are almost almost exactly the same.

I'm looking at them right now.

It's like mirrors of each other.

Bo, I don't know where, what happened to either defense tonight, especially Green Bay, because it's like a couple weeks ago, I thought they might be the best defense in the league.

They were shredded tonight.

And I guess I'm just really,

I'm impressed with Dallas and what the passing game looked like in a post-CeeDee Lamb environment here.

I mean, George Pickens, who I think, you know, it seems like a hot and cold personality and a hot and cold player, like absolutely stepped into the wide receiver one role and was dominant.

And it wasn't just him.

It's Tolbert.

It's Turpin.

It's the whole crew, Ferguson, like they really work tonight.

So

you go and look at what happened against the Giants.

They're able to put up points and score like a waterfall.

And I'm looking at the Packers thinking like, what is happening to this team on defense?

Where do you want to start, Mark?

You want to start Packers or Cowboys?

Dallas.

Okay, let's talk Dallas.

So

Dak is playing out of his mind.

Dak Prescott is playing out of his mind.

What an incredible quarterback this guy is.

And sometimes it gets a little bit

kind of, it kind of gets snowed under a little bit because of the Cowboys of it all.

And last year he wasn't healthy, obviously, and they were playing great even before he got hurt.

But, you know, this version of prescott is is the one that nearly won mvp a couple of years ago and yeah when you have a truly great quarterback um even when the number one wide receiver one as good as ceede lamb uh you can keep going as long as you keep him upright and you're right with pickens pickens is a stud and he's gonna have a monster year in this offense like he gets a chance to be the number one guy with lamb out with the ankle and he goes eight for 134 and two touchdowns in this game um so the Cowboys' offense, I tweeted this, I've said this on the show.

I don't know if the Cowboys are like a good team, but the Cowboys are fun to watch and they're entertaining.

And as football fans, it's like that's all you can ask for because you know they're going to be in prime time a lot, right?

So, at least might as well be fun.

And they are.

The defense has its problems.

You saw it again in this game.

They can't get after the quarterback, they don't cover well, but they can score points, and

you have to give them credit.

They're down 13-0 in this game.

That fateful blocked blocked PAT recovery by Dallas runs in was a three-point swing that hovered over this game for the next three hours.

I can't really remember

a game where it just seemed like both offenses were going to score a touchdown on every drive.

And I think with Dallas, like Javante Williams has been a factor the past couple of weeks.

Like

they have the ability to run the ball too,

along with the pass.

So there's a lot of people just stepping up in the absence of City Lamb, and it's working.

And Dak is playing right now as well as any quarterback in football.

And there seems to be, I don't know if it has to do with like what the teams had to focus on as a group amid all this chaos with Micah Parsons and Jerry Jones on the mic all the time.

Like the offense just simply believes in themselves to such a degree that I think they will win games.

I mean,

they're going to win games like this.

There are going to be a lot of games like this, I think.

The second highest scoring tie in NFL history.

I'm troubled.

I don't know if it's Sessler Curse or what, but I'm really troubled by this Packers defense.

You know what really troubled me?

If I'm a Packers fan,

that touchdown drive that put them ahead in the end of the fourth quarter.

It really is a team-wide meltdown because they give up a long

kickoff return.

Turpin takes it back 45 yards to near midfield.

There was an incomplete pass down.

You could have called grounding on that, which would have backed them up and taken it down away.

And I understand that Packers fans are sour about that.

But after that point, it's still

second and 10.

Seven yard pass to Ferguson, 19 yard pass to Tolbert, 28 yard touchdown pass to Pickens.

And to your point, like the way this team started the Packers defense,

the way they started the season to where they were in this game, I was like, God, that was non-competitive.

And this is an NFC that the Packers are going to try to get through that has some real dogs at the top of it, including teams like the Eagles and the Lions.

And this is not going to be good enough.

So I give credit to them getting off the mat a couple times there.

And Jordan Love and the Packers offense had a very good day, obviously, as well with putting up 40 points.

But this defense has got a little bit of a gut check time.

And Parsons, you mentioned Parsons did make that big play.

That was the only play he made the whole game.

He had one other hurry where he almost was able to strip Dak, and Tyler Smith made a great job, like chipping him at the last second.

Otherwise, he was invisible.

And that's like for the amount of hype done by NBC going into this game for him to be that off in terms of his impact, that was a little troubling too.

Yeah, because what you want is Parsons creating so much chaos that it makes your secondary just that much better.

And instead, Green Bay is getting flamed with deep pass after deep pass.

Parsons goes to the tent at one point.

He's invisible for chunks at a time.

And, you know, if you want to say like who won the trade, I'm not really that interested in that.

But like,

if you're going to be the Cowboys and do all this,

you know, it's like, I think you'd have to say that like Dallas at this point

has won this trade.

And I'm willing to say that at this point, because let's say this, had Micah Parsons been on the Cowboys tournament?

Let's not go there, Mark.

Let's not go there.

Won the trade?

I mean, come on.

Maybe they won the night?

Well,

in a very high-profile

clash, they don't come out with egg on their face on any level.

Stage one, chapter one of that.

You know what I can't figure out?

I can't figure out if I wanted

the Cowboys to win the game at the end of regulation or an overtime there, just to see, like, we're Jared Jones, like, fans in terms of him as a ridiculous human being.

Can you even imagine if they would have won this game, the Super Bowl party they would have thrown in Dallas?

I mean, they might do it anyway off a tie.

But I feel like, I think maybe one of the reasons I'm frustrated

beyond the fact that it was up at 6 a.m.

this morning and then the Sunday night game went till the end of overtime, and I'm like delirious right now, is that

we were so close to maybe the greatest Jerry Jones press conference of all time or on-field interview and we just missed it.

Damn it.

Yeah,

we were edging to that because I think like, you know,

in this country as sports fans, like outside of you're watching like NHL hockey, like

ties don't work.

And so it's kind of like a massive wet fart to close what was an absolute spectacle.

40-40, man.

That's a crazy game.

That's a crazy game.

And NBC was driving me crazy.

Their pregame coverage.

It was just like,

I'm glad that the actual coming.

I know, you're right.

But the actual football game was like, hey, guys, there's a whole game here, not just this pre-determined manufactured storyline.

Like when the telecast opens with Jarrah sitting in it, do we have that?

Can we

play the clip?

Hey, Maddie.

Listen, I've got a few people in the office right now.

Why don't you hold the calls?

If I could say one thing to to Michael Parsons before the game, it would be that, number one, I know how we feel about each other and how much I respect him and what a great player that I think he is.

Just stop.

I mean, it was just like...

It was just getting hammered over the head.

Absolutely just hammered over the head with this narrative.

And then the game started and it showed that, yeah, it's not just about one guy and one owner.

It was an actual football game with 22 guys like going at it for

70 plus minutes.

But

great,

great battle, great prime time game.

Again, a little suspicious.

I don't know the simulated nature, the WWEification of the NFL schedule,

getting this thing to 40-40 and

getting everybody the ratings for the extra 45 minutes of overtime.

Got to ask some questions, but I'll leave it there.

I won't say anything else.

I think it is fair to be be inquisitive on that front because it's becoming more and more presently true to myself as well all right there you go a big sunday of nfl action um of course mark and i will be back on monday with justin for the double header

monday night double

three hours jets dolphins bengals broncos so we'll have that we'll have any other kind of news and reaction and of course the the newest power rankings where do you put the packers after after this game where do you put the cowboys Oh, it's fun.

It's all fun.

So, thank you again to everybody.

Remember, the YouTube subscriber challenge is ongoing.

We need you.

We need your support.

Get us to 25K, push us over that number.

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And until next time, do what you must.

Heed the call.

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played.

Songs that made my hair parade.

Guys like us, we had it made.

Those were the days.

And you knew where you were then.

Girls were girls and men were men.

Mr.

We could use a man like I was over

again.

Didn't need no welfare state.

Everybody pulled his weight.

Gee Rola so red great.

Those were the