The Around the NFL podcast. Living in your hands. From the Chris Westling podcast studio, it's Around the NFL. The week 13, flagship program. Wow, Dan Hans is here with Greg Rosenthal and Mark Cessler's, Heros Bowl. This is an interesting week 13. We had six teams on-site and, boys, I... There are many times where I miss living on the East Coast. It's days like today where I sit down and I turn on the 10:00 AM starts and up and down the Eastern Seaboard, just miserable weather, messing with everyone's lives, destroying any semblance of having a fun day at the stadiums. I think, okay, it's pretty nice out here.

Yeah, 100 %. We got some weird weather, suspended play, which seemed to happen once a year, whenever I was covering that game. I believe it was you, Greg, that you're suddenly watching an hour and a half later than all the other early slot games ending.

I mean, the Cardinale Stealers deserve to be a four and a half hour game. But yes, I'm always happy we're here on the West Coast. We're not driving home either after Sunday Night Football at 12:30 at night.

Yeah, that's true. You had multiple games in raining or downpour conditions. You had all the saggy fields, slippery fields, all those black pellets everywhere on the cleats and on their faces and their face mess.

Then you had all these.

Backup quarterbacks and all these guys that.

Can't play. You got some things going on around the league. But the one thing we did have, one thing we knew we had in our back pocket in this week, 13, were the Eagles and Niners. Here's the good thing. We're going to get to the game. Maybe it wasn't the barn burner we were expecting, but we learned a lot about both teams. Also, Greg.

These guys hate each other. I just get the feeling it was round one to set it up for a better one.

To Philadelphia, we go. First in 10, Niners in the Philly 48, Purdy. Looks left now, middle throws caught. Brook and tackled by Debo, Samuel Ritzcord. First on 30, 20, 15, 10, 5, touchdown! He is going. San Francisco! What an absolute beast, Debo Samuel.

Oh, man. Greg, Papa, and Tim Ryan with the call, K-N-B-R. There's so many stars on the Niners and superstars on the Niners. I have long thought Debo Samuel is one of those people that's super... He's in my superstar club. If you look at the Niners bump in the road this season, it neatly coincides with Debo, Samuel, out of the lineup. He is such a devastating Jack of all trades. We saw it again in Philadelphia, where Samuel scored three touchdowns, the star of a dominant offensive performance for Kyle Schanehan's offense and a 42-19 win over the Eagles. That's just the second loss of the season for Philly, and that tightens up the top of the NFC picture considerably. Greg, the game started in one place, and then once San Francisco got things calmed down, the whole game changed.

Yeah, the first quarter was completely dominated by Philadelphia. They had seven first downs to only six plays for the 49ers, 124 yards to negative six. Then after that, the 49ers put together what was really one of the best offensive performances of the season by any team. And zooming out, I think it really brings into focus this matchup, 49ers offense versus Eagles's defense specifically, because that's where I'm concerned about this Eagle's team. Their linebackers have been poor all year. The safety is up and down, and Chanahan just put a big circle on those linebackers, and he kept putting them in conflict, and their tackling was poor, and it was Kidal, and it was Samuel, and it was Ayuk, and it was Purdy on some early third downs being very calm and making good throws. This Eagle's defense, 17th and DV away coming into today, to me, it is a season long issue. Once again, they get out gained by 95 plus yards. That's five straight games that that's happened.

That is wild. This is a matchup situation, too, because I'm with you. We're going to see these guys playing again. For the Niners to start- Hopefully.

We're going to be cheated.

There's a confluence of these teams, though.

As football fans, I want to feel like we got if these teams somehow don't meet again, and hopefully then it's the title game, or at the very least, the division plays, we got to get these guys back in the.

Same field. Yeah, you throw Dallas in there, too. I just think to start the way they started, and you're wondering, did the Eagles just have this team's number? To turn around with these long, shanehane-esque touchdown drives, six touchdowns in a row, clock-chewing, high yardage, multiply situations where it's like every game, someone else steps up and plays the star for San Francisco. This version of Debo, Samuel, when you have Trent Williams back in the lineup, it just makes it impossible to figure out how to defend them.

Right, you mentioned it coincided with Debo being out, and that's totally fair. But Trent Williams is the guy I feel like. He's to me, a first ballot type of Hall of Fame type guy who's still playing at a high level. When they got going early and they were down 6-0 in Philadelphia, went 0-2 in the red zone, settling for field goals, they did it by going left. It was running left behind Trent Williams. I also think about a play to start the second half. They did so well going into half time, a four minute drive that killed the clock, didn't give Philadelphia a chance to score coming back, and then a four minute drive out of half time. There was just no pressure on Purdy for the most part on those throws. I think of a third and seven to start that drive coming out of half time, which is an outry to Ayuk to the opposite hash. You don't think of Purdy in terms of his arm strength or anything, but that was a real deal pro throw. He had a nice run in the red zone where he bounced off the tackler. It was a great day out of him, too.

It's pretty rare that a quarterback gets 314 yards and 27 attempts, four touchdowns. He does feel like the third or fourth person that you talk about on this team, but it was really just perfect.

Isn't that life or party?

Right, it's perfect for everyone, put that this was the second best EPA per drive performance by any team all year, which makes sense. They went six straight touchdowns and then finished the game after that.

I got to give us a little bit of credit because I think as a group, we were on this as a possibility with the Eagles living dangerously these last few weeks and the Niners looking for that revenge, playing at a high level, being in a place where they needed the win. There seemed like an opportunity for this. Mark, I think you locked it up.

I did.

Good job there. I almost came with you. I would have been safe in that spot, too. You got to give the Niners a ton of credit. Like I said, a lot of bad blood here between these two teams. We'll get into what happened with the director's security in a little bit, but for them to put them on them that way with the six straight scores. I think you can't win a game in the first quarter, but you can lose one. You could let a game really sneak away and you look at the way the game started. Greg mentioned that Eagles went red zone, red zone, field goal, field goal early. They also, the Niner's first possession minus two yards, their second possession, minus four yards. They're facing a third and in their third possession and Purdy connects with Kiddle to move the chains. They're facing a third and one a few plays later. It's Purdy again.

That's where he was so calm in the pocket, just waiting for D. A. B. To get open on a third and one is.

Very good. He hit Samuel for 13 yards. Once they got the crowd a little bit taken out of it and they got calmed down, they just started rolling. I mean, that's a sign of a championship team. We're not going to go back and Eagle's fans don't want to hear it. The Niners fans that wouldn't help them anyway. I think the Niners were the team last year in the NFC and the way it played out in the NFC title game was heartbreaking for them and their fan base. This was an announcement to the Eagles. This is us at full strength and you don't want to see us in January.

Let's see what happens. Right, because the 49ers, the Devans got more pressure on Hertz than vice versa. Now sometimes I feel like Hertz left the pocket when it was clean and just held it forever and wanted to make a play. It was back to a little bit of what we saw from Hurts. I don't think their offense was bad today. They finished with 19 points. It was just disappointing, but they moved the ball. They didn't have a ton of possessions either. He almost had 300 yards, but no running game at all. Then Hurts just not feeling comfortable going to his first read. Not a lot in rhythm for them. Give Charvarious Ward and some of the other defensive backs.

Credit for that. Yeah, and I think it's so easy to magnify the Niner's offense and talk about how versatile they are and all their stars, but it's like their defensive front is growing more powerful. They gave up 2.6 yards per carry to an Eagles team that has been hot and cold on offense in some ways, but they were able to lean on their ground game heavily early in the year, and today they couldn't at all. I think to go do this in Philadelphia, which is one of the nice to your places to play and come out from the West Coast. It's like, this is a statement operation by the Niners. Stop telling me that Brock Purdy is so far down in this MVP race. It annoys me. It annoys me because I don't know what else he needs to do. I don't know what else.

He needs to do. Here's the thing, and I'm with you, fundamentally, I'm with you. He needs more credit. Also, I think Krish McAfrey deserves real MVP, a real look.

He had 133 yards in this game. We haven't.

Even mentioned him yet. It was like, for him, that's a quiet. But he was, every time they needed a play, he made a play. He had a couple of runs where he just showed the best footwork of any running back in the league. Just a brilliant, brilliant offense. You could tell when they had a nice sideline shot of shanehan, Purdy. I thought, Iu, bailed him out a little bit on the play, the short touchdown pass to get them going. You saw is.

On.

Fire. You saw Shanehan pump his fist on the sideline and they were off and running and it was just another show of shanehan's might. You know what? Let's do this game on the NFL Plus on Monday. Yeah. Game of the Week.

We've tilted towards the closest game of the week sometimes. This has a meaning in a very.

Different way. Now, would we do Game of the Week if Big Dom was not involved?

Listen, Big Dom is someone who I think we need to have long conversations about. It was made clear to me from John Kelly that Big Dom, the director of security for the Eagles, is a folk hero in Philadelphia. Apparently, his skirmish with, who's a Dre Greenlaw? Yeah. That led to Greenlaw suspension and the head of security for the Eagles being escorted off the sideline, which is funny. I was a little bit worried, I got to be honest with you.

That.

That was going to spark some type of magical moment. Then we were going to have to deal with Bradley Cooper jumping up and and leading Dom Chantz and all that stuff. But it didn't happen.

That way. It didn't. This was not the ironic nickname where they call a very large person, Tiny, back in the '30s or '40s. That old movie, yeah. He literally is just a giant guy and they call him Big Dom and they should.

Now, he's going to become... He would have become an even bigger folk here. People love him. Andy Reed loved him, too. He called him my big Italian son back in the day. I think that was on Chris Law's podcast. I saw him and tweet that out. People loved him. But Big Dom ultimately, skated in terms of the broadcast. Let's calm down, Big Dom. I get why Kyle Schoeneghan was pretty fired up afterwards.

He was-I won't hear this Big Dom slander.

He does not need to be involved. Nick Ciriani actually agreed and said, Dom should not have been involved there either, didn't approve of his actions and baited. He did a good job baiting Dre Givlin to getting ejected, but I'm not sure he needed to be ejected when some big guy on the sideline is pointing a finger at his face. Get out of there.

The Eagles have problems after this game. I feel like Big Dom's Law on the list. There it is. If you're watching on YouTube, they got to figure out how to stop a team, an elite team, because they have not been. Guess what? They get to, I think, the Cowboys next week. All of a sudden, everything's up for grabs.

The NFC will be up for grabs. The number one seed.

Maybe you don't want to see. Spicy.

It is delicious.

All right, let's see. Let's move on. Let's go to another game that looked like it was going to be a blowout that got tight to the Superdome.

Too tight end set for the Lions.

Golf takes, fakes to give, goes end around. Now they flip it on the second back, coming around. That is Jameson Williams inside.

The 15.

Inside the 10, dives into the end zone. Touchdown, Detroit Lions. A little razzle-dazzle to number nine.

Who did a.

Swan.

Dive into the end.

Zone of.

The.

Lions have extended their lead. These are the great, that's Dan Miller, of course, and Lomas Brown of WXYT. These are all amazing athletes that we watch every Sunday. But sometimes you see a play and you see a player and you're like, Oh, he looks different than the other guys. James and Williams, we see you, bud.

He saw through the air there.

Barely, but not even just the sword, just the speed in which he cut through those 20 yards.

You can't tell me he did not run 33 miles per hour on that.

I was ridiculous. I swear to God, if he was not, and Eric, if there's a way to track this down, if he is not above 21 miles per hour, I'm going to be sick to my stomach for the entire next-gen industry.

Rightfully.

So. The Lions got that well-timed TD from their first round mystery man and another huge performance from Breakout Titan Sam Laporte and a 33-28 win over the Saints. Mark Detroit jumped ahead early, nearly let it slip away, but the ability to make big plays when it mattered, that was the difference.

They did. Obviously, I think Detroit, and we've identified there are certain weaknesses that they carry into their postseason journey. But at the same time, it's exciting to see what you got from Jameson Williams and Sam Laporte is emerging as a rock solid star tight end who is becoming a bigger and bigger part of their offense. They jumped out to a 21-nothing lead in the first seven minutes. Derek Carr threw a terrible interception on the first offensive play of the game. Detroit popped it in a couple of plays later. He had a rough fumble in the fourth quarter, and that was when they were climbing back into this game. Derek Carr got whacked at one point, looked really banged up, left with a shoulder injury, a back injury. I got thrown into the concussion portal. At one point, he's getting- I hope.

Everyone's happy.

Well, no, you know what- Derrick Hall is.

Out of your life once and for all.

I know. It's a concussion portal.

It sounds dark. It does sound dark. Protocol. You have been defending him. I had to say that at one point with the Superdome, which was massively filled with Lions fans, so that's telling me that a lot of Saints fans are about as frustrated as possible in selling their tickets. But he's getting booed relentlessly because it was a rough... The way this whole thing started, it was not a good look.

For Derek Carr. Like when Tason Hills on the field, they then boo when the car comes back.

It was a tough spot. It was. You just saw a look on his face on the sideline. But at one point, he's getting lustily booed by this crowd, and he'd hit 15 straight passes.

That first interception was just a drop. It was not on him, to be fair.

Yeah, I think the problem with the whole thing with the whole experience here is becoming like the whole Saints team feels like they're floating away to me. It starts with the coach, it's the quarterback situation.

He's like the face of it, and he's become the main target. Absolutely. He absolutely has played a role in what's happening here, Mark, and I'd love to hear more. Although I'm still trying to wrap my head around Next Gen stats report here that James and William reached a top speed of.

20.7. Okay, here's why, though, because you only get those top speeds if you run for 25 straight yards. You know what I mean? No one can get it in the first 15 yards. You know.

What I mean? You can't tell me you watch that play in real time. He's not going 60 miles an hour.

Yeah, it's questionable.

When he jumped and then the celebration, the multipart, he only has a couple of plays every week, but they're among the most exciting plays in the NFL. I love me some Jameson Williams right now.

All right, let's watch some Jameson Williams postgame. One way to play.

We.

Already know what's going on when Waymo get the ball. I just got to get it.

Let's go touchdown.

We win. Let's go. 93.

Let's go. He's such a great guy.

I got to start calling him Waymo. I thought it was Jaymo. I thought it was Jaymo, but I guess he's Waymo.

Mark, getting back to the game. Along the lines of what you're saying with Car, and James Winston comes in and they have a chance to steal this game, and then he's scatter-shouting the ball all over the place. Just be careful, Saints fans, of who we're getting after because it's a lot of people that aren't.

Getting jobs. Well, they're not to some of their parts. I think it's pretty clear to most Saints fans that James Winston is not going to give you a completely different experience. I thought this game mattered a lot for Jared Goff, who was money when it mattered in the final couple of minutes. It was third and eight, they're up 33 to 28 with two plus to go. Goff hit San Laporte, a beautiful throw. Then on that same drive on third and nine to ice this thing to not allow the Saints back in when it was so close, hit Josh Reynolds. It's like this was a game where Jared Goff returned to the player that we've seen, not critical mistakes down the stretch. For the Lions, had they somehow crumbled here, we'd be asking a lot of questions. Now they're nine and three for the first time in the Super Bowl era.

Right, a big win on the road. -wow.

-that's quite a stat. Nine in three for the first time in 57 years.

The.

Lions. They're going to have.

A lot. It's been a dark organizational journey.

For me. They're going to have a lot of these little numbers. This game went like I thought where just there would be messiness. These two teams, the Lion's Defense is a problem enough that there's going to be messy moments. I was nervous, Greg. You were nervous. You jumped on my lock, but you shouldn't have been nervous because they always get it right in the end.

Give it to us once. No, give it to us...

The vibes were right. Give it to me again.

I got to say one thing real quick. I thought that was going to be a very annoying aspect to today, and you guys barely even talked about it. You made the office more enjoyable.

What were you expecting?

Just a lot of you guys. Like a block party? -yeah, like.

Dozy Doe around the office. I'm not going to honk too much about the Saints losing here, but that third and nine you just mentioned, the Laporte catch before that, nails. He has a chance, Laporte, to set the all-time record for Yardage as a rookie. I mean, he went 9 for 140 today. That's the record, I believe, for a single game for a rookie tight end. Now he's got a chance to break the season record. He's got a pretty good chance. I think he needs a couple of hundred yards to go in the last five games. He's ridiculous. But that throw on third and nine to Reynolds, that play call and then Goff's execution of it was as gutsy to me as any fourth down call that Campbell's made all season. That was as gutsy as going for it on your own 32. Because the Saints had no timeouts there. The Cowboys were in a very similar spot, actually, on Thursday night when they went for that touchdown late. A little different situation. But if all the Lions had to do there was run the ball and they get to pun with a minute left up a touchdown.

Instead, they call a pass on third and nine. I'm thinking that's one of those plays where you tell Goff, if it's not there, just eat it and the clock will run and we have a 95 % chance to win. Yeah. There's pressure early. Goff actually takes a hit on that play. He's moving left to get out of the way. It's like second reaction, Goff play. When he throws that ball, I'm thinking, No, this is such a bad idea. He puts a dime on Reynolds while moving left, and Reynolds makes a great catch with it too, and run after the catch to get the first hit. That was a really high level play by Goff and Reynolds and a ton of guts by the coaches and stuff, and a lot of trust. They really do trust Jared Goff an incredible amount.

In these big things. He's shown them outside of the past couple of games where he deserves that trust. There was one moment in this, and it wasn't the network's decision to do this, but Camara raced out of bounds and ran into the legs of a Chain Gang dude, and the camera guy was fixed on the whole situation. It was uncomfortable to watch because it was just not an athlete, but a normal man just writhing on the ground in a way that it was worse than stuff.

It was a catastrophic lower leg-surgery, as I understand.

-it was a dislocated kneecap.

Or something. Jeff Duncan of the Times Picky even reported that he was at University Hospital in New Orleans. He was going to have surgery.

It was.

Uncomfortable to watch. We wish him well.

When we've been on the games in London on the sideline, there's always this underyour belly of concern that a football is going to hit me in the head or a player is going to smash in me and I'll just be killed?

Right. That would be in some ways a pathetic way to go, but also cool. No, it would be pathetic. We're all just specks on this universe, and at least that would be a memorable death.

You had to be pathetic.

How's your buddy, Mark, doing? Oh, died. Killed on the sideline by Derek Henry in week five. Like, oh. He gone. Notable. He gone. All right, let's head to Houston, where the Texans were looking to keep their playoff push going. The Broncos were looking to keep a winning streak intact. Third and goal from the Yade, Wilson and the gun. One back, P-Rye. Wilson gets the snap. Wilson, Chase. Wilson escapes the sack, throws left side of the end zone. It's intercepted. Yes. The Texans have it. It's a weekly yes from the Texas game.

The weekly yes from the Texas game. Jimmy Ward. Jimmy Ward.

Houston's going to win. Nine seconds to go. Yes, Mark Van der Meegere and Andre Warre with a yes, K-I-L-T.

Andre Warre.

That's awesome. Yeah. The fun and surprising Texans' season has been defined by the play of wonderkind QB, Bryce Young. Jake's floating asleep. Cj Straud. On Sunday, we were reminded of the huge gains made on the other side of the ball. Jimmy Ward's end-zone I-N-T saved the day for the home team and a 22 win over the Broncos, whose winning streak comes to an end and the Texans keep themselves in the playoff mix. Interesting game. All right, let's start with the big injury news because it's terrible because Tank Del on the Texans from in-close touchdown run, he's blocking, he gets rolled up on, and he's got a broken leg and he's out for the year and he's going to injured reserve. It's hard to understate how important or overstate how important he is to this team and what he is meant to CJ Strowd and what has been a historic rookie season. When you have a quarterback having a historic rookie season, there's usually a wingman that's helping him make it happen. That has very much been tanked out. Losing him for the balance of the season is devastating. That said, this is not a one-trick pony act as offense.

On the day that they lose tanked out for the year, Nico Collins goes nine for 191 and a touchdown. They still aren't getting anything from the running game, but Straud was able to find a way. And most importantly, as I said at the top here, it was the defense because you had, like I said, you had the interception to seal it. That was one of three picks by Russell Wilson. The other two were by Derrick Stingley, their number three overall pick two years ago. And Will Anderson had two sacks and two tackles for a loss. So you have all these guys when they were the worst team in the league the last few years, and they're starting to bank these high level draft picks, it's really looking like they're hitting on these guys. You're seeing, with Domingo Ryan's lead in the way, progress on that side. That makes the Texans dangerous.

Yeah, I think there's a connect of DNA to what D'Amico Ryan's was able to do in San Francisco before he got this job, where there's player development. Will Anderson's growth has... He was a fascinating player today and wreaking all sorts of havoc. You bring in Jimmy Ward, who obviously they knew each other from San Francisco, and he's making big plays. And Derek Stingley, yes, CJ Stout is the biggest story in Houston. But this defense can make a difference, too. I just like the way this whole team-building situation has gone for Texas pretty quickly.

Right. Jimmy Ward and Stingley, you look at when they were in the lineup and when they weren't, and that coincides with them playing much better. Now their offensive line has also gotten healthier. I think that's helped too in terms of the pass protection for Stout. But they are box office every week. That is now, and they showed a graphic during the game, like heartbreaking losses for the Texans that they had suffered. Their last three losses were all heartbreaking. I was looking at it and I'm thinking, Well, that's true, but every time they win, it's a heartbreaking loss for the opponent. That is now eight straight games that have been decided by one score, and I'm just eyeballing them. I think all of them were the last drive where someone has the ball and they either win the game or they don't win the game with the ball in the last seconds. It makes sense that they're a young team, and I think they got to be so excited about the Stingley-Anderson combo. As well said, Dan, to start it out.

Thank you, Greg. Yeah, so you have that side of things and the reason, and again, they just lost their most important offensive player besides Stroud. I'm not going to come down on the offense too hard, but they really struggled to put this game away. Third down, they were four for 16 in this game, and it allowed Denver to hang around even on an imperfect day from their offense. Russell Wilson, we just talked about him. Greg is pumping his fist right now because Wilson, after.

Going- I didn't say a word.

-no interceptions during that five game winning streak. He throws three interceptions in this game. It's frustrating. I know Denver fans are feeling it because the interception that ends the game, he makes a really athletic play to escape the rush. If he sets himself a little bit and takes an extra beat, he probably doesn't throw that ball up for grabs because he had some time. But I think he was rushing after the hurry and it led to the interception. Those turnovers were killer. He also had a touchdown pass and a touchdown run and did move the offense, especially in the second half, but it wasn't enough. Arrow up on Courtland Sutton, by the way.

I feel like every week he's doing.

Something amazing. I think I had a tweet earlier today that he's really arrived. But he had a 1,200 yard season a few.

Years ago. One of Wes' favorite players thought he was an All-Pro that was buried on a team that depressed his stats, even though he was just incredible.

But he's back now. That version of him, his back. He had his ninth touchdown catch of the season. That was the positive. Denver and Houston still in the playoff mix, but that was a big win for the Tech.

I think Russell.

Wilson- And a big loss.

In the injury. Wilson on the ground last three or four weeks has been looking a little bit more like the old.

Russell Wilson. Yeah, had a big fourth down pickup. They're 6 and 6, Texans 7 and 5. We'll see if that tie-breaker ends up mattering, but even just the fact that the Texans get a game up and have a fairly favorable schedule moving forward is big. James Palmer pointed out Russell Wilson, 3.8 yards per attempt in play when they weren't doing play action in 13 when it was. I think that points out a little bit of what I've been just saying with Russell Wilson, which is that they're still a limited offense. They can't just drop back to pass and win. That's not what they're doing. It's like play action. It's like scheming up types of plays.

Yeah, I mean, nobody's pounded the table for MVP for Russell Wilson. No.

There was one Broncos fan, but you don't want to be-Well, you don't want to listen to it closely. Some blog, it was like, this is better. -it's like MVP or something. -mvp? I don't know. Yes, I saw one.

That feels slightly disconnected from reality.

I think he's probably a big wins as a cubie stat guy would be my guess on that play. One last thing before we move on. This happened a couple of times that I saw in games I watched today happened in the Metalands too, against the Falcons when they blew a play dead on a strip of Trevor Simeon that would have went for a touchdown. They overturned it on review from an incomplete pass. But if they just let the play out, it's a touchdown and a game-icing touchdown for Atlanta. In this game, the Texans hit Semad, J. P. Ryan for no game. They took the ball away, ran it in for a TD, but officials ruled forward progress had stopped. Replay showed that you could very easily have gone the other way on that. It's just, come on. Bad, offitiating day, by the way.

Slowed up.

With these whistles. I feel like I was watching a lot of bad, offitiating in the games I watched today. I don't know about.

You guys. The Texans first touchdown was after the Alex Singleton ruffing, which was pretty soft. That was a fourth down turnover that it kept the drive going because he lightly pushed C. J. Straud. Although if I was Texas fans, I would love the fact that Straud immediately got right back in his face. That's why I was surprised Singleton just got the penalty and Stroud didn't at all, but it was good. I liked it.

I would say if you're an official and it's pouring rain or it looked like it was hailing at one point down in Tampa, I think I would do a lesser job.

Not a problem at energy stadium, if that's what it's. Is it still energy? I don't know. They flipped that one so many times.

You're saying they wouldn't try as hard if the weather was bad?

I don't know, but to try as hard, it's like to go do anything just as good. If it's freezing rain and you're soaking wet.

How about it's your job, be a professional. You know what? If this.

Is open air- It sounds like a terrible job to.

Begin with. -if this is open air and the rain is pouring in-.

We'd be professional, but this is.

What we do. -stays at a.

Level of greatness.

All right, let's take a break and we will march on. All right, welcome back to Around the NFL, the flagship program week 13. It's time now for The Sunday Drive, presented by the first ever Toyota Grand Highlander. It is nick Shook time, so let's head to Nashville. 2:34 to go in overtime. Second down.

Goal at the four. And two out of the gun.

John Finnan net. Looks to his right and into a throw. Got him. Got him. Michael Pittman, touchdown. Touchdown, Michael Pittman, ballgame. I-n-d-y. Michael Pippen into the.

End zone from Gardner, Mechu.

And the.

Colt.

Win 31-28 in Nashville. Yes, sir. Oh, the Bongos are out. Matt Taylor and Rick Van Tury with the goal W-F-N-I. Gairner, Meen, and Shoo. Through a four-yard touchdown pass to Michael Pitman with 2-31 to play in overtime, allowing the Colts to escape. Nashville with a 31-28 win over the Titans. That's four straight wins for the Colts to keep him in the playoff race in the A-of-C. The Colts had needed that touchdown because nick Falk booted a 46-yarder earlier in OT, but they would not be denied. Another man who will never be denied in all things, but especially in the gym. The pipe. Pipe. Pipe, pipe, pipe. Game turned on that block pun, didn't it?

Yeah, a little bit. I got the Colts back in the game. Titans were got to an early lead, had a little bit of control of the game. Colts couldn't do all that much offensively. You get the block pun, everything swings. Suddenly the Colts are stringing together a good drive. They take the lead. They get it to overtime. Titans fight back. This game had everything, guys. This game had pretty much every element you'll expect from an NFL game. There was all kinds of wackiness. You had two former backups, now Starters playing pretty good football. A classic meeting between the Colts and Titans. This used to decide the division. It's not going to decide the division this year, but it was worthy of those types of stakes, and Colts come away a winner. I don't know if you know, but just so you're certain, in case the radio call didn't get it through to your head, he.

Got it. He's got it. He got it. Yeah, you can watch games all season and I would imagine we won't see any other game where a punt is blocked twice in a row by the same team, which knocks out the punter and then brings in nick Foulke to punter, who, by the way, just punted fine. Let's just save a roster spot and have.

nick Foulke. Also had Tana Hill as the holder.

Yeah, he did not have a great day.

Which that may have cost them because they missed the extra point with Tana Hill, the laces. It's like, okay, can we calm down with the laces and hit an extra point? What do I know?

You're out of your element, Danny.

Then more importantly, in the same game that we have two straight block punches, we have a pick two, which is one of my favorite things that can possibly happen.

Super underrated.

If this game did not involve the Colts, Titans, it would absolutely be our game of the week. It's fair. Maybe we should rethink it. I'm just saying there was a lot going on in this game.

We're in the Bermuda triangle. Go ahead, Shucky.

Yeah, they are. I mean, Gairdner Mince had a strong day. He didn't make any mistakes. He had a beautiful touchdown pass to Alec pierce, who I think is coming on as of late. He's a guy who I've liked. You look at the receiving core and you think, Well, they don't have all that much talent, but if a guy like pierce can produce like he did today, then suddenly they'll be much better and be more than just Michael Pitman, who also had a strong day. But it's a cult team that's hanging around, guys. We know who the Titans are. They went through a stretch last couple of weeks where they couldn't move the ball at all. And it was nice to see Will Levis get some time to throw. Because Derrick Henry found some success on the ground before he exited with an injury, Levis was able to operate the offense. You see what Greg was all high on Levis for a month ago or however long ago it was, it's there. It is there. I totally see it. But once Henry leaves, that offense shrinks, gives the Colts an opening. And again, like I said, the Colts are hanging around.

They're seven and five. They're probably the ugliest seven and five team in the League right now outside of the Pittsburgh Steelers. But then again, you have to take them seriously from here on out, especially when they find ways to win this game. Because for a while there it looked like they were going to drop one to a.

Division rival. And they're not going away if they play like this and if they're coached like this because they've got the Bengals, Joe Borough Free Bengals next week, a Steeler's team that's going to be playing with their backup quarterback, a Falcons team that's beatable, the Raiders who are beatable, and then that final game with the Texans. We talked a lot about the Cults last week, and I hear it like they're not always exciting to watch. But I do think that Chain Psyking is a difference making type of coach. I look at the overall job he's done this year. I'm really impressed. You get this version of Garner, Minchie, not the one that's throwing three interceptions, and you can win.

Right, that was his best throw of the game in overtime. I want to give them credit because they're just clutch. They always find a way here. Then I look at the I think had a total of 14 yards on their last five possessions in the fourth quarter. Their offense was not clutch in the fourth quarter, but their defense made just enough place to get them to overtime and then Minchu makes the play.

The culture now three and a zero when Minchu does not throw an interception, which he does do that a lot. But when he plays the clean version of a Minchu game, it's just like the Colts are a reminder. I hope teams are learning from this in this very sloppy quarterback season of 2023. Your season doesn't have to be over because your starting quarterback got hurt. It doesn't have to be. For many teams it is because they don't prioritize or invest in the position beyond the starter. Minchu was out there for anybody, and the Colts said, Okay, we like having that guy behind our rookie. When the rookie disappears at the end of September, they were still okay because the rookie was still figuring some things out. It wasn't even like you were going from up here to down here and Minchu somehow has to find a balance. He came in playing, I mean, he's a lower level, he's a high backup, lower-rung starter. But that's enough in a division like this and a team like you're saying, credit to Styken and the whole operation. They've been able to win a lot of these coin flip games and they're in the mix as a result.

I mean, if you can have a fringe starter as your backup, you're in a different place than Teams. With a lack of creativity, stick someone behind your starter like in Cincinnati. If anything happened to Josh Allen in Buffalo, where it's like, Your season is lost if you stick in a guy who's just a ham and egger.

Yeah, but I think it also is.

The situation- Good ham and egger reference.

These situations, they're indicative of how strong your coaching staff is because we've seen this happen over the last few years. And you've seen it in this season where a team like San Francisco in previous years had to go through a number of different quarterbacks and yet found a way to still be competitive. Or this year with the Colts and how Shane Stykens is doing such a great job, he'd be a Coach of the Year candidate if D'Amico Ryan's didn't exist, I think. Or you look at the Browns and how they've had to go through all these things with their quarterback situation. Kevin Savancey has been up and down in that department, but yet they've stayed afloat. The silver lining of a messy quarterback season is you get a better evaluation of how strong coaching staff is and how well they're equipped to handle adversity. Sometimes that could be a fun little element.

He is a candidate. They invite three coaches to the NFL honors. Put him on the list. He certainly got a chance to be one of those guys.

Don't invite two coaches who aren't going to win.

I don't know how that works. Maybe they don't. But they definitely.

Announced the three. They invite all the coaches. But if you don't invite multiple coaches, then you've long sold. You've got to give it a ton of step. I do like the.

Idea of, man, Shane Stagg is like, I could be Coach of the Year if only D'Amico Ryan's didn't exist. It's like, cue Josh Mcowitz on DateLine with a core curve of.

An episode. They got the same record. They gotthe same record and one's coaching with Min-show, so you might have a point. But it's one.

Of those scenes where I'm.

Insinuating murder. Yeah, everything goes right for them. You get two block punches. Jeffrey Simmons leaves with an injury and Derek Henry leaves with an injury in the same game.

Tough. On the day Henry went over 100 with two scores, hopefully he's going to be... Okay, Shuki, thank you, buddy.

Easy one this week. Thanks, Bradley, guys.

Hey, no more bys in a couple of weeks, so we're going to need you down the stretch.

I'll be getting my back ready to carry the load or at.

Least some field of the load. You don't skip back there.

No, I don't. I definitely don't.

Shuki, thank you, buddy. All right, let's keep moving. I think we had a good Thursday show, guys. I keep looking at some of the results, and it's syncing up with our commentary going into these games. We looked at this Dolphins came to his game and said, You know what? These fish, it's been a while since they gave us some explosive fun. It was explosive. Well, it was explosive fun for the Dolphins and explosive something else for the Commanders and their fans. Let's head to Landover. Hill in motion, goes to the right, looking for him, deep down the field. And he got him. What a movement by a hill to catch that football. He was turned inside, Joe Labola hit, throw to the outside, and he weaved his way back. Another bomb to a to-hill touchdown. Jimmy Cefalo, WBGG, what they call Tyree Kill, had two more touchdowns in five catches for a buck 57. That was basically in half a word. He and the Miami Dolphins absolutely ham it the Washington Commanders 45-15 to remain comfortably atop the AFC East. They're the East and they're nine and three for the first time since 2001. How about that?

Greggy. This was it. This was that a dominant Miami offense. Of course, if they're having a dominant day, Tyree.

Kyl is all over it. Yeah, I wanted to be dazzled. I said it. It's been a while since we had one of those two games and we got it. Yes, Tyree, Kyl is ridiculous. That is such a great adjustment on the ball there where maybe they weren't on the same page exactly and he gets the long touchdown. But Tua creates math problems with these receivers. Those two long touchdowns that he threw were in getting rid of the ball in 2.13 seconds and 2.25 seconds, which is so fast, and yet the ball is 50 yards down the field and Hill is catching up to it. So it's timing, it's footwork. I think, too, has really improved at resetting and making the first pass, rush or missed. That wasn't maybe the case on those touchdowns, but there were many plays today where Washington actually did get pressure quickly and he just does a little shoulder shake or he moves to the side and then he resets. It's very Tom braided, just in terms of the pocket presence of just quickly moving and then making a nice throw. I'm all aboard. The Tyreke Hill is the MVP right now.

I've been saying that for a while. He's at 93 for 141 and 12. But this was absolutely also a great to a performance and it was nice to see.

We needed that. I mean, Tyree, Kyl is just doing this every week. Part of it is the opponent. Washington has given up 105 points in three games. While I think Sam Howell has been a visually intriguing player to watch. Everything is falling apart. It's clear the coach is going to be gone, the GM is going to be gone. I think Howell deserves a chance to stay as your future starter. I think he's shown a lot, but he also is not protected well, walks into a lot of his own sacks. When you get the version of them throwing a PIC 6 today, lightning. Now I think it's a good sign that without Jim, Phillips, the Dolphins, like defense, played.

Another good game. They got so much pressure on Howell. I thought Howell played well in this game, which will sound crazy because he had 127 yards in an interception. The interception to me is not on the quarterback. It was a great read by Andrew Van Ginkgo, a play that they, through film study, he just read it and picked it off. Van Ginkgo had a sack, a pick six, and almost blocked a pun. Then, yeah, Seeler and Ogbug getting pressure. They were all over Howell, who had a couple of rushing touchdowns. He only took three sacks in this game. This is one of those where he could have taken about eight sacks in this game.

You can't give somebody a stat for almost doing something.

I'm just saying it was-.

You can't include amongst a pack of stats.

I just made like, Van Ginkgo was everywhere and there was a moment right after a pick six and a sack that almost blocked the butt. I was just like, Wow, that was great.

Nice little run. I think we now have Ron Rivera. He has now graduated to the Frank Reich Dead Man Walking Club. It's no longer a matter of if, it's a matter of when. There is certainly a case to be made here, and everyone out there wants Eric Bielomy to get a shot as a head coach with his resume to give Bielomy four or five weeks.

I couldn't agree more. I don't think you just let him go because I think he's been a big.

Asset to them. Give him a shot. See what happens with the team. See how they play with him and see how the offense operates with him, having more responsibility. Now, I might look smart if this happens on tomorrow would not shock me, but they also just let go of the defensive coordinator. That was the blood leading that I thought would take Rivera to the finish line. Yet games like these make you think like, what is the point?

They're entering their by week, too.

Another reason why it could happen.

It could. There was a moment where Bionomy was barking at Howl on the side. It's not a good position for Bionomy to be in either. I don't think it helps anyone. But yeah, Rivera's defense. The Dolphins only had nine drives in this game and they put up 45 points. It was rather efficient.

That was what we needed. The A-Chain came back, scored a couple of times. That was a.

Get-right game. That was a.

Nice performance. I had not thought of it in roughly 25 years, but on NFL Prime Time on ESBN, back in the 90s, Eric Bionomy was a running back. Chris Berman would call him sleeping with Bionomy.

Oh, yeah.

The Julia Roberts vehicle.

One of his best.

He's a Mular and Techmobiles. He's a Mular and Techmobiles.

It's a great game. Now, sleeping with Bionomy is.

A classic. Eric sleeping with the enemy. Good stuff. All right, here we go. We move forward because that's the only thing we can do. Across the sidewalk, Mark Cessler was not in attendance, and maybe that was a good thing. Still has seven seconds to.

Work with.

As they.

Set up.

From the 30, second and one from the pocket, he deals down the seam. It's Coughlin. Stroke it. Out the left side. Oh, that was pretty. Puca, Nukua to the crib. Touchdown, L. A. To the crib. We know we love our guy. Baby-long with the call.

Great guy, great announcing.

Oh, yeah. Matthew Stafford threw three touchdown passes. That guy, Puku Nukua, the first ever Rams rookie wide receiver to cross 1,000 yards in a season. It's December third. How about that? The Rams keep winning. That's three in a row, sneaky three-game winning streak, 36-19 over the Browns and So-Fi mark, that final score is misleading because we were sitting next to each other. The Browns have a chance to tie this game, I believe, in the fourth quarter.

And then what? Midway through down one, right?

Yeah. You're one of the most reliable kickers in the league. This is an extra point and things go south from there.

Dustin.

Hopkins. I think this feels like a lot of Brown's games we're going to get down the stretch. Because you had Joe Flacko, and I'll say one story for Cleveland is that I would not have been as surprised if we got a version of Joe Flacko that literally was a statue, couldn't move.

Any fumbles today? No.

No fumbles. Through the ball, he had a bad interception.

See, if you protect the Stone Age pony, he can do.

Some things. He also looked to me refreshed. I'm not saying he's going to-Oh, he's relaxed. -he's not going to confuse anyone on the ground, but he didn't look like he looked to me last year with the jets. I thought he threw the ball outside of the one interception that was so costly, threw the ball really well at times. It's like, Oh, well, if you had this version of a quarterback play, during this... They've been on four of them, and it's been real up and down. Maybe they win at some of these close games. But this is an example of... Amari Cooper goes out with an injury. They've got very little else happening through the air. They're a patchwork ground game without nick Chubb. The amount of mistakes they can make and afford is so narrow. Unless their defense has one of those games from Myles Garrett, has three sacks and you're turning the ball over, generating takeaways. They weren't doing that today. It's a couple of weeks in a row where I was just concerned about the overall journey of this Browns team. I feel like other AFC teams at the bottom of that wildcard grid are starting to heat up.

Cleveland's going in the other direction, and I don't really think you can rely on Joe Flacko and what's left of this offense to save you.

Well, yeah, midway through the fourth quarter, which is crazy looking at the final score, the Brown score touched on them, missed the extra point, but then they get a quick pun from the Rams, and Joe Flacko actually has the ball with 6:51 to go down one point. At that point, there were a lot of tweets. I was half watching this game too. There's a lot of drops. I thought Flacko was playing great. Like Tony Grocey saying, This is the best game any quarterbacks played for the Browns this season. Then Flacko just forced one. He took a shot that he shouldn't have taken. John Johnson intercepts it, returns it, and suddenly the RAMs are rolling. But you can tell me more, Mark, that I was surprised to see the RAMs rack up 400 yards almost in this game. I think Stafford played well and Pukanakua is great and they got the running game going late. But if you had just said, okay, this is an average defense they're playing, they looked like an average defense based on the stats. Did they look like that?

Yes, because it wasn't the way that the RAMs did it a lot through the air. I mean, the Kua fried them. They don't have Denzel ward, and that's two weeks in a row, they really miss him. I think that if you look at Jim Schwartz's defenses historically, they've shined when he's had that shutdown corner and they're picking on other cornerbacks in this game. Nukua had 100-plus yard because of that play right there, but he hit 100-plus yards in the first quarter. Then it looked like he had a nasty injury. It was a rib injury, but came back in. This is a gritty young guy who when you don't get big numbers from Cooper cut, Stafford Killeen on him, and they found different ways to beat pretty banged up Brown's defense.

Browns didn't force the turnover. The Browns didn't have a sack. A lot of talk about the Browns as a historic defense, that's out the window now. They've been normal for a few weeks now. I don't know if Myles Garrett is healthy or not, but that's now a very quiet game and a big spot. On the other side of the ball, Joe Flacko, he's 6'6 and he's got the Howitzer. Even on the Jets last year, if you protected him, he made some plays. If they can block for him, he cannot play behind a bad offensive line at this stage of his career. But if they block for him, I'm sure he could keep this offense moving, but the defense has to rediscover that spark or, yeah, they're going to fade out of this very quickly. The ramps are interesting. This is their first Greg 3-game winning streak since.

Their Super Bowl season. Wow. They're limiting teams. I think this is four straight. They've held opponents under 21 points. The defense, which is so undermanned, gets better and better. Kobe Turner, a rookie, had a really nice game. But I think this is a reminder. Flacko is old, for sure, 38 years old, but it's easy to forget. Matthew Stafford's 35, and he is just next freaking level. There was a play. They hit a couple of big plays to DeMarcus Robinson in the second half. There was one where Kyren Williams is coming out of the back field on a wheel route, and Stafford turns his whole shoulder, and Williams is open, turns his whole shoulder to look at him. Doesn't even do a pump feet, but just moves his feet and his shoulders to look at Kyron Williams, gets the safety to bite, and then just throws a total dime behind the safety. On that touchdown to Nukua, that was an audible at the line of Scrimage. Sean McVeigh did not call that play. Awesome. Stafford's operating at a really, really high level, and that's why they're 6 and 6. He still is the biggest reason to me that they're.

6 and 6. You know what? Lebron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were both at this game.

At.

The football game? The two highest scoring players in the history of basketball.

But they're basketball players.

I don't know. Why would they be at the football game? I don't know. It made no sense to me from that angle that they're not the same sport.

Doesn't it seem like...

We should have heard something by now. Oh, Eric.

How much more time do I have to buy for you, bud?

I don't know why this is the...

Football is completely different than basketball.

It's too late now. I don't know why this is the drop of all the drops that have gotten the most use.

Out of the years. There was something highly comical about flying up the Rappaport connection. Ian was your guy. He was taking from basketball. See?

He has that one already. That's an NFL insider saying that. I'm getting-.

But I agree. I think we all agree with you. That's why I was surprised they were even at the football game.

Yeah, I mean, it is illogical.

All right, speaking of illogical, the jets for the past 12 years. Well, 50 to the Metalyans. 12. Boyle from under center here on second and nine, play fake to Dahlvin Cook. Boyle wants to hang one up for Garrett Wilson, and it's picked. Jesse Bates has got another one. Fifth interception of the year for Jesse Bates. And like last week, he read it from center field. Atlanta celebrates the pick by Bates with 26 seconds to go in the third. Yes, that right there might be the final throw of Tim Boyle's NFL career. Yes, another benefactor of the Aaron Rodger scholarship fund bit the dust on Sunday. Befuddled by the Falcons defense and an ugly 13-8 win for the NFC South leaders Desmond Ritter back in the lineup for the second game. He threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to Michal Pruitt in the second quarter. That was the only touchdown in the game, and that was the only thing that you would really need to beat the jets who cannot score touchdowns. The Falcons, they keep their spot top the NFC south. However, man, if you want to talk yourself into the Falcons, go do it until you're blue in the face and I'm not going to take anything away from them.

They won this game, but I still don't see it with this team. They could not get the running game going. They really won because how inept the other side of the ball is here.

They're a tough watch. I'm looking at this drive chart that the jets had six drives that went for less than six yards. They'd seem to look at it every week. I guess I'd ask you this, do you see the team continuing to splinter and fracture, or was this a little bit better?

That's almost too exciting a fate for the jets at this point. They just stink. They're a bad team. They are now on their third quarter back. Trevor Simeon came in after that boil throw and was equally ineffective. And credit the Falcons defense, okay, you got to. Because you've got to win games in the league. When the jets took the field for their last possession, they are down... What are they down? They're down five points. They have the ball with less than two minutes to play. They don't have any timeouts, but they have the ball. They just have to go down the field and score a touchdown. There was no one watching this game. There was no one at MetLife Stadium that thought the jets had any chance to go down the field. They had one completion on the drive to get near, I think, the 40-yard line, and then they just walked backwards and didn't even come close. The Falcons, as frustrating and up and down as their offense has been this season, and again, you would have liked to see their running game do better in this game, their defense has been at times, pretty good this year.

Against a bad offense like the jets and weather like this, it was miserable at the meta-lens, they took advantage of.

Their setup. Yeah, sometimes I think the narrative has been played up too much that the jets defense is just holding on, holding on, holding on. Some of those games, they haven't been pristine. This game, you give up 194 yards, you give up three yards per play, you hold the Falcons' running attack, which was outstanding last week, to 90 yards. You keep giving your offense a chance after chance after chance. The Jets offense had seven possessions in the second half. They did everything humanly possible. This was the stereotypical Jets game that we've been talking about all years. Now they have the fewest touchdowns of any team through 12 games in 30 years. I saw this stat from... I think it was on True Media. I forget who tweeted out. I apologize. But two of the top five worst games of off-target throws from quarterback. They measure how many throws did you have in the game that gave your receiver no chance to even make the catch. Tim Boyle in this game was, I think, third worst all season. Trevor Simeon was fifth worst. It was like, they can't find a quarterback who could just throw the ball.

I know there was bad weather, but it's like Ritter.

Wasn't on that list. As I will do on these Sundays of the season, because this has been... Honestly, and there have been so many, but in a lot of ways, the most frustrating, worst jet season because of the Rogers side of things. Maybe if there's any positive to this, this almost certainly should take Aaron Rogers out of play, trying to force his way back on the field because they are essentially eliminated at this point. I heard there were Zach Wilson, apologists in my mentions being like, Oh, and you wanted and you wanted Zach Wilson out of the lineup. Well, yeah, it didn't work, but it was always a hail Mary to see if one of these guys could provide a spark. Neither could. Now you have Bob Sala, who has completely been stripped of any dignity up on the press on the day saying, Oh, you might be turning to another quarterback next week. Again, it didn't have to be over after week one. Maybe the Super Bowl dreams had to be over, but you could have still been competitive this year if you went out and got a real quarterback. You didn't. Like I said, you get what you deserve.

Another gruesome Sunday at the Metalyans. The thing I worry about spinning forward now is, and I've seen it before, they got some really talented. It's a top heavy roster for the jets, but a lot of talented young guys that are living through a gruesome season after a horrible ending to last season. It's just bad energy and bad vibes. That leads to negative talk and guys maybe not wanting to be in the building anymore and they're seeing what's going on elsewhere in the league where people are having fun and winning games, it's gotten to that place for the jets. I don't know how much else needs to be said about this game. The Falcons took care of business, but I wasn't overly impressed by them. It was like a mediocre team against a team that is completely imploded and the mediocre team came out ahead.

Yeah, I feel really ultimately incorrect about what I thought the Falcons would be. They're just the middle of the road team in a terrible division. They're going to get an extra game in January that I don't need to watch.

Maybe, maybe. They're six.

And six.

They're in that world. They're six and six. That gives them a one game lead over the Saints and the Bucks. Hopefully, it's only one NFC South team to sneak in. Although, if the Falcons are at six and six, they're one of four teams. We just mentioned the Rams that are at six and six. It might turn into five. It's a six.

And six year. God help us. We get two teams from that.

Southern division. Probably won't happen. Probably won't happen. Aj Tarrell got hurt in this game, by the way. They're a best defensive player. After losing Grady Jarrett, they need him back.

All right, let's see. Let us move to... You're dying with anticipation, aren't you? Let's move to Pittsburgh, where the Stealers are looking to continue their quest, 12 and 5. Third down on a yard on the nine. Three tight ends. Murray under center, Connor behind him. One receiver to the right. They hand it off, Connor to the left. First down, Connor dies for the end zone. Touchdown. James Connor with two scores in the welcome back party in Pittsburgh. The Cardels just broke out the black and blue Brigade, baby. Light up and suck the beating heart, metaphorically speaking, out of your opponent.

Whoa.

Put that on the top today.

He'simmediately clip it. I just won the four too.

I know, Eric, you know, when we're saying this, do we have a folder of the top calls of the year? Yeah, I have a folder. Great. Because once again, Ron Wolfley is announcing, this is my competition to lose. I'd like that he clarified, metaphorically speaking.

Right.

James Connor, the former Steeler, ran for a buck five and two touchdowns, including the game, Icer. The Cardinals beat the Steeler's 24-10 at the field formerly known as Heinz. It's their first win in Pittsburgh since the Summer of Love, Mark.

Which was? 1969. Well, it depends who you are.

But yeah. That's correct. Greggy, I mean, also, come on now, Stealers, we can't be December and we're losing games to the tank and cards.

We can't. For a game that was delayed by Lightning multiple times in Pittsburgh in December. Come back to us, Mother Nature.

It's a high desert team flying across the country. They're just looking to get this game.

Over with. Right. At one point, it was 24-3. It was highly entertaining and surprising. Sometimes you watch a game and you're just not expecting it to go a certain way. Late in the second quarter of this game, it was going how we expected. The Steelers had out gained the Cardinals at that point, 161-36. Then a two-play sequence on the goal line changed everything. Kenny Pickett, scrambling, trying to score at the four. He got to the one-yard line. He hurt his ankle. We're now hearing that it's a significant injury, according to Jerry Doolak. He just said not good and that I'll miss some time, extended time. If it's an ankle.

Injury-he's ducked serious injury. It seems like he's getting hurt every.

Few weeks. He takes a lot of big hits. That sounds like a multiple week injury. In comes Trubiski. He hands it off to Nadeh Harris. It's 3-3 at the time. Even though the Steelers have totally dominated, they hand it to Harris. He gets stoned at the 1. Well, at least he got the Steeler's defense.

Backed.

Up or playing against the card or anything else. We haven't done anything backed up. Kyler Murray leads one of the most epic drives of the year, 15 plays, 99 yards for a touchdown. You know what? Kyler Murray played fantastic the rest of the game, so did James Connor, and they dominated the second half of this game. Trey McBride went wild. The second year, tight-end eight for 89. In a touchdown, he dominated that 99-yard drive. I was just floored by how much this game changed in that sequence.

That 15-play touchdown drive was Arizona's longest march since 2015.

You know what else is? It's the longest March in NFL history. I mean, yards-wise. You can't top it. It's tied a lot, a bunch of them.

That's a tie. It's a tie. That's a tie. It's a tie. It's a tie. It's a tie. It's a tie. It's a tie. It cannot top it. Can't beat it. I have a weird stat from this game.

Weirder than what Greg just said because that was weird.

I'd say it's less trenchant.

Okay.

Kyler Murray at five, ten and a quarter inches to Ron deal Moore, who's five-seven, their touchdown combination is the shortest duo to connect for a touchdown since. Pard pierce, who was 5'5, threw a touchdown to Dutch Sturna man. He was 5'8 on the 1920 Decatur Staley. I think it was football. It was a different.

Sport back then. That's pretty good. That was pretty.

Dense that fact. That came from Adam Harstead.

That was one of my favorite plays and throws of the week. They actually called it back because of a holding call. But he has thrown touchdowns to Ron and to the goal, to the goal, to the goal. It was a little more in the past, I believe. That would still be a true statement.

Unless one of them was much taller when.

They-when that happened. But yeah, that was... Kyler, you look at the back score and you see 145 yards on 23 attempts and a touchdown. You think, okay, it was a good game. Nothing crazy. But he had two of the best throws I saw a week. One would have been a 60-yard play to Moore who dropped it, and the other was a 40-yard touchdown to Moore where Moore made a great play. It was a great throw on the run, and it ends up getting called back. It was very confusing because they never showed flag on the broadcast. Suddenly they are lining up again. But wow.

Ruckus.

Asleep at the wheel. A little James Conner revenge game in Pittsburgh. It was fun.

How about Mike Tomlin, who's got to be... I mean, we know our boy, Mike T, with the Aviators. He had to be furious with his stealers laying an egg against the cards. Let's listen. That was a horrible day at the office. We didn't do much right.

In that game, to be quite.

Honest with you. We got to own that obviously starting first and foremost with me.

Just losing football. A lot of it was bad snaps.

He called it JV. He said it was a JV performance.

He had a lot of bad penalties.

Yeah, they had a lot of big penalties. Nine for 77, and they're usually one of the least penalized teams. They had three different bad snaps. You'll see in the box score that Trabiski and Picket both had fumbles, but those were the bad snaps. They lost one, so they set up a short field. The Cardinals touchdowns were often, other than the 99-yard one were on short fields. Yeah, it was just sloppy. Trabiski wasn't great, but he took a couple of shots. He wasn't a disaster. It was just they got down fast in a hurry and JJ Watt went out with an injury. He did say after the game, JJ Watt, or JJ Watt, sorry, that he's fine and he'll be playing on Thursday.

I didn't want to be that guy because you guys were excited about it. But I just couldn't get on board with this Pittsburgh offense turning the corner talk this week. Then when this game happens and I have to watch it. But it's just like even when they were putting up more yards, they still weren't scoring points. Once again, they can't score.

I think it was a reminder. Their running game was working great until the moment they got stuffed on the goal line. But when you suddenly get down to touchdowns, that went out the window.

Well, that so-called explosion happened against a Bengals team with zero offense right now and the defense is like, yes. That can't have been as good as you.

Thought it was. It included, again, 16 points, as Dan pointed out. Back to normal. Yeah, this guy, McBride, who, again, for the 17 people like myself who watched All or Nothing and Trey McBride was featured in Hard Knocks in season. Very likable guy who had very little role last year. I think he is their leading receiver for the season now, Dan, which maybe is not a great thing. But he's on pace for over 800 yards. That's pretty big time for a Titan.

Let's add some weapons in the offseason. Nice hands. Mark, to get 12 and 5 now, we got to be Patriots at Indy, versus Seahawks at Ravens. Need them all.

Yeah, it's not going to happen.

And the Cardinals- Need.

Them all. It's not happening.

Thank you, Cardinals, for winning this game and helping out the tankathon exploits of the Patriots here.

Let's take a break and then we'll hit those patrons. Good lead in. I just think we got something here that sting. Welcome back to Around the NFL, the flagship show. Hey, I was thinking because I came into the studio before we started recording, came in a little hot, came in thinking if the NFL ever invested in some type of promotional campaign for our show. It hasn't really happened yet, but doesn't mean it can happen. They started to flex our financial might, what, $15 billion company? Yeah. All of a sudden they start running ads on Sunday for around the.

Other day. Yeah, that would be fun.

I'm sure they'll get to that soon.

I just had an idea that popped into my head, exterior to dads at a playground in a park.

Okay.

Dad one's like, Oh, man, it's so hard to keep up with everything going on in this world, especially in the NFL, because my wife is dead. Then the other guy comes in and their kids are playing in the background and he's like, Well, I got something for you. The other guy's like, Oh, a new wife? He's like, No, I have the around the NFL podcast. Then the guy with the dead wife goes, I don't need another show all about X's and O's of the game. Then the other guy goes, This show is a little more than just about the X's and O's. End of commercial.

I think it also could have different versions where it's all the same, except his last line is different. It's like, Actually, these guys have a lot of fun, too. -that's good. You know what I mean? You're building and building different variations.

It's unclear how the wife perished.

Well, I was going to say you could have a last shot of him being like, Well, off to the cemetery.

I mean, that seems like aa downer. Seems like a downer.

I think our show would mask over a.

Loss like that.

-but here's the thing. -it's like...

That would get people talking.

They.

Take their jobs really seriously, but they don't take themselves too seriously. Oh, yeah.

These guys love ball, but it's not just about the ball. They have fun.

Very organic conversation. Yeah.

It's like you're friends with them.

These are like the three buddies in the bar.

Especially if you're from Northern Scotland.

There's Scotland coming up again on the show. Great country.

If anyone's listening from the ad department, just to re- That was a freebie.

-free of chat. Why have they never invested even a penny on our show?

I've done the slogans before. I've never heard anything. Anything from the third floor. Well, maybe that's for the best. All right, let's head to Foxborough, where the bizarre misery continued for Greg's Patriots.

Robert.

To throw. Has a man. Erison ends the game. Alex Erison. When the game demanded excellence, Erison emerges. Kudos to Kelly Moore. Got to know.

Do not shrink.

When the lights are the brightest. He puts the ball in his most valuable weapons hands and Justin Herbert delivers.

The victory. Put that.

On the list. That's pretty good. You got to know money. I got a chance to work with money for a few years in Powerang. The man's got a keen sense of humor and a dry wit. You could hear the sarcasm pulsing through that call. Oh, God. Again, also, if you're going to put, and the other guy from San Diego, too, if you're going to take money out of Seale Beach where he's doing his surfing at 6 AM, and you're going to put him on a plane and send him to New England in December for this nothing burger of a game, at least get a W chargers and they do. This Cameron Dicker made 238-yard field goals. Hunter, JK Scott. He was pinning the pets inside the 20 all day seven times in the cold and rain. Herbert picked up that late completion, Mark Cessler, 6-0, the final.

This was the worst football game I've ever watched.

Is it? Wow. Six-nothing, two field goals, two short field goals. Yeah, that's.

Pretty rough. I'd say from a distance, I'd be into that a game because it stands out as something very unusual.

It's a Cessna type of game. You're right.

Unwatchable. Bailey Zappi is in there, Yon.

Is he worse than Mac Jones?

I think it's hard to detect who is worse because there's also nothing around them. They lost from Andre Stevenson with an ankle injury pretty early in this, and that's really all they seem to have. I thought Zappi's day was characterized by a pretty great deep shot in the third quarter, the trailing 6-0, horrible drop by Taekwon Thorton. It's like they just can't get anything done. The Patriots defense looked good because the chargers- Six points. -the chargers are spiraling a little on offense. They cannot run the ball. They have no balance. The Patriots, this is a wacky stat, they are the first team to lose three straight games despite allowing 10 or fewer points in those three games since go back to 1938 to the Chicago Cardinals. Every other team this year that has allowed 10 or fewer points is 53 and 0.

This.

Offense.

Is so bad. They're on three?

Yeah, this offense is so bad. They're so unwatchable. Yet, I think, I guess we don't know where Bellachick will be after all this. It's like what they did last year or last week by, I think, overtly missing that final field goal.

I mean, they didn't try to.

Miss it. I don't know.

I do know.

They weren't playing for the win.

I'll tell you that. They played for the tie. The jury is out in my opinion on that one. Then missed the kick. That was drastic. I mean, it's working out perfectly. They're so bad that they're probably going to get snagged the number one or number two. How about this?

I'll take it a step further. Everyone's connecting Belichick to the chargers. I don't know whether there's actual logic to it. Well, there's logic, but actual smoke to it, or if there's fire to it or what. But not only did you lose again, and it's remarkable how badly this season has gone. I never thought it could get this bad for Bill Belichick and Shaq and Nuley. No. I don't even want to go down the road of like, if he's really the greatest coach of all time, how could this be happening? Because there's a lot of things going on here. But he also made the Chargers look bad again in its own way. It's another nail in the coffin of Brandon Staley, despite getting the win in a way. The conspiracy theories continue to unfurl.

Well, Staley's defense just pitched.

The shutout. No, that's the thing. It's not all negative because I'm losing hope in their offense. Quentin' Johnson had another terrible.

Drop today. That was awful.

I mean, it's happening every week, so I don't know if there's no news story there, but Kaleel Mack had two more sacks. He has fifth... He leads the NFL with 15.

Sacks right now. When I saw that on Twitter, I was thinking to myself, Okay, we know he had that insane game when he had seven. That's always going to juice it. But he has a chance to challenge for the all-time sack record. Kaleel Mack, he's not young. He's not young. Yeah. That could happen. He certainly could challenge for a 20-Sack season, which only about what, 20 guys or.

Whatever have done. All he's got to do is play Zappie and Aden O'Connor every week and he'll get it done because Zappie, the little I watched was just holding onto the ball forever on some of those plays. But this- Still 15 Sacks. No, still. He has been- Crazy, December third. -he has been fantastic this year. The thing that gets me and it happened these last two weeks with this team is, Belichick has spent more money and more time and he's so worried about the details and he invests in all these special teams only players and their special teams are terrible. They're bottom five in DVOA. Their kicker who they drafted and got rid of focus is terrible. Then every other time I looked at this game, you got Bryce Barringer, who's one of the worst punters in the League. Bryce Barringer, who's another rookie punter who they also drafted. They drafted a punter. The kickers, the great shakes. He's terrible. The difference in punting in this game and the kicker. You've lost that with Belichick, I know the defense has been playing well, and they have been. They have. It's still not good enough. But I.

Don't know if you could save this conversation, but how is Bill Belichick presiding over something this truly dreadful? How has this happened? How could it happen?

Well, I think, first of all-Is he just old? I think.

He's old. Is that what's.

Happening.

Here, too? He's been in the same place and he has no checks on his power. The few people that maybe not had checks on his power but would answer to him or have some power in the organization, they're all long gone. Nick Casario, he's long gone.

Tom braided is long gone, of.

Course, as well. He's been a bad GM for a long time.

Yes. Let's hear from Bill Belchick. Awward press conferences are the norm. Now he's forced to answer these questions about his own job security. Bill, do you want to stay here.

And keep coaching the Patriots?

I'm looking forward to this week getting ready for the Steeler. Read that. That's a Bill answer, but it all feels like the beginning of the end.

You and I are getting Steeler's Patriots on Thursday night's in.

Oh, yeah, a little Trubisky, Zapdog. How about this? The world is getting Jet's Patriots in week 18.

A meteor. A meteor, not many.

People will watch that. A meteor, ready to eviscerate everything that lives upon it.

I'd take the meteor.

By the way, Chargers in the AFC at five and seven are two games back of a playoff spot. You can't totally X them out, but if they were in the NFC, you'd say they'd have a chance. But in the AFC, two games back with five games to play and a lot of teams to hop is a lot. But they have to just win out, essentially.

Can't go there. Which they will.

Not be doing that. They will not be doing that most likely.

We're in that part of the year where we had these conversations and you're just waiting for the slow crawl of time to remove these teams permanently and mathematically.

All right, let's head to Tampa, where the Panthers and Bucks did battle in the downpour. The snap of Goodwin, Belt high, dropping the throw with Bryce Young flushed out of the pocket, flushed out of the hills of all upfield. It is intercepted, kicked off with the 43-yard line by Antoine. He throwing at you. -magnificent Antoine, Winfield. What a minute. He was in the middle of the field and chased it down to the sideline. And Young, those are a pick, and the Bucks have it. The great Jean Deckerhoff with the call. Yes, Antoine Winfield. When it looked as if the Panthers could somehow find a way. Bryce Young threw it up for grabs. Winfield came away from the ball with the ball, threw this from the sideline, steps from the sideline, and the Buccaneers escape with a 21-18 win over the Maurabund Carolina Panthers playing their first game without Frank Reich. What to take away from this game? First of all, let's talk about Mike Evans. Just when this game appeared to be slipping away from the Bucks and Baker was having a miserable game, he was averaging four yards in attempt, he hits Evans over the middle.

Evans goes down the sideline like a house on fire. He dives toward the pylon. They mark him down at the one. As the officials often were today, they were wrong. He actually cleared the pylon. And upon review, he gets credited with the touchdown as he deserves. 75 yards, changed the game, got everybody back in line and gave Baker a stat line that you wouldn't be afraid to show to your family. Evans finished with seven for 162. He is now over 1,000 yards. He has now gone over 1,000 yards for 10 consecutive seasons. Jerry Rice has the record of 11 straight seasons. What? What? It's wild. It's funny. I think it was nick Wessling who texted me at the beginning of the year and says like, Mike Evans doesn't get enough respect. He should be in the superstar club. Look what this guy's done. The interesting thing about Evans' career is he's gone over 1,000, as I just said, every single year for a decade. He has 10 touchdowns this year. It doesn't matter who the quarterback is. He had that golden period with braided, but he's also played with a lot of Ham and Eggers, Mark, and Baker is on the upper scale of that type of group of quarterback.

He is just an incredible player. I don't know if he's a superstar, but I think he's a Hall of Famer.

Right, because literally, Jerry Rice is one of the greatest players of all time. But Jerry Rice had great quarterback play around him.

He didn't do it to start the career. This is a record in terms of starting his career that Evans is just way ahead of anyone else.

I think one thing about Evans this year specifically, because I remember they were just an unwatchable mess on offense for much of last season. It was like Tom braided and Evans were not on the same page. When Baker's been good, Baker and Evans have had a pretty good connection from wire to wire this season. It's just another example of Evans adjusting to whatever's around him and being that consistent.

Right. I think he only topped 1,400 yards once. He had a 1,500 yard season in 2018. I mean, he's got a chance to even get there this year. He's in a contract here.

He's on pace for about.

1,400 yards this year. Yeah, he's in a contract here. Between him and Winfield, they actually have two guys that have a chance. Evans probably isn't going to make All-Pro because the receiver is so tough to make that. But I think Winfield has a chance. I really have just been so impressed by Winfield each and every week. He had a sack, two tackles for loss, three passes of defense. He had the interception, eight tackles. I just haven't seen a more impactful safety, so that's been a weekly thing with him.

He is Evans, and we'll move up Evans, but he is an interesting player and he's a fascinating player. Greg, when you get to your free agency 101. I think age 31 season, one of the most consistent players in the history of the sport. What market would he have? Anyway, the Bucks in the NFC South, which is bad, as we've stated, that was only the second win for Tampa Bay in the last eight games. But now that they are in a tie for second place in the division. They are in the mix. It wasn't always pretty in this game, but they got the job done. On the other side of the ball, No, Bessachia, Bump here for the Panthers who were competitive in the Rainy conditions, but they're still just you're not seeing anything with this offense. Shuba Hubbar did some things, got in the end zone twice for him, but I just don't see it. I have this theory that I'm working on. I'm workshopping that Bryce Young is getting one inch shorter every week now. Now he's about five or six. There aren't that many more weeks. The pocket feels impossibly muddy around him.

There was one play in this game where the rush was coming and he just turned and threw it behind him and it bounced out of bounds for a fumble. Aaron BrixThere was another play, I believe it was a third down where it was very clear he had to check out of a play and he doesn't and they run right into a big loss where they're showing a blitz and he just doesn't see it. Whoever it is that's tasked with getting him on the right track, they have a lot of work.

To do. Well, it's a lost year and it's going to be an offseason of a billion storylines about how now he feels comfortable and it's a new start. I mean, it's been a rough spot, but I thought that final, that fourth down game ender, he had a chance—if he were little, if he were reacting more quickly, to hit Adam Thielen. It shouldn't have happened the way it happened. It was just.

Another-he's not processing and it's.

All bad. Right, so it's just not really... There's not a part of it where you see... It's crazy to me that he out-dueled, if that's how you want to put it, CJ Strowd in the one time they met. It was the most atypical game for him.

Out-dueled, it feels strong.

To go up and have won that game, it feels like four years ago.

I would have played slightly.

I would say. It's the best game, I think.

Usually, Outduled is like two athletes playing on a high level.

One edge is the other. I could be wrong. I don't think the Panthers scored a touchdown in that game, I believe. They won with five field goals. But I was getting a lot of text. Now, you mentioned they didn't get the Bessachia bump. No. But according to our friend, Spice rack, the fired coach principal, at least in terms of the desert is 9 and 0 since September 29. I can't fact-check this. That means nothing. He's including college. Can we please? But Carolina kept it closer than expected. It is my point here.

You don't get credit for the Bessachia bump when you lose. We're not all in the desert, okay? No. That's for teams that win after.

The firing. I do want to use his comparison.

Not gamblers.

Who win. Because he was going nuts because he wanted the Panthers to do better and win this game. At one point, they were down to that. He said he was on fire. He was on fire comparing Young to Bryce Young in terms of his body language saying it was identical. Wait, comparing who? Bryce Young to Achilles Smith was his comparison. Oh, wow. He wants to be anywhere but here. I will just push back just a little slightly, which is just hes like, it reminds me a little bit, maybe because they're all number one picks. Alex Smith's rookie season was the worst top pick or really rookie pick I've ever seen. He bounced back pretty quick to be-Spin it, baby. -okay. Eli and Jared Goff were close. All those guys were in a similar situation where they showed almost no bright spots their entire rookie season. It's happened before.

There's something else here, though. You're right. There needs to be patience. But I really watched Bryce Young and feel like, to your point, Dan, he plays small. I don't know if he's not Eli Manning, this prototypical perfect quarterback type build. He's not small.

He is. He plays small, he is small, and he's getting sacked. They're on pace. The Carolina line is not helping him. He's on pace to be sacked 66 times, which is almost the team record. That's a recipe for disaster as well. Oh, man, they are hot on our tails, Greg, in the Picks competition. They are right behind us now.

Two games. You should have seen Mark's face when you said us just then. He's like, What is this narrative dance?

What is your record right now? What is our record, Greg?

11 and 1? What are you talking about? I'm 11 and 1. You're 1-0 jumping on with me. Actually, you're not because the one week I got wrong, the three of us all did it together.

Well, there's a lot of different standings at play. I'm 1:1 when we picked together. I'm 12:1 now. I'm 12:1. I'm 1:0 since I just got on the train. I'm 1:1 overall after they blew up the entire operation after the horrible Joe Berry injury designation fiasco. Then if you want to look at the broader, I think I'm 6 and 7.

I don't want to look at the broader. I think this.

Is a farce. Do you want to join the Rosenthal train? Because it was a little bit of a bumpy ride today, but we were drinking champagne and eating caviar.

I locked up the Niners with confidence and never for a second had any concern about.

That affair. Nice job. That was good luck.

Hey, we all got Dubs right.

Across the board. I'll travel my own path, though.

You're a brave man.

Me? I'm like second to last place.

It's just me. It's Greg and the motorcycle and me and the sidecar.

This is one of the most bizarre podcast strategies we've ever had.

Storylines. All right, Sunday Night Football. Three receivers right, two to the left. Snap to the homes, looking, steps up, scrambling left, still looking, still waiting, fires it into the end zone, broken up, incomplete, and there is your dagger. The game is over. The Packers have defeated the Chiefs, 27 to 19. Oh, what a moment for this young team. Wayne Larivie with the call for Packers Radio. Yes, it is a big moment for the Green Bay Packers, a team on the rise now. Six and six after a 27-19 win over the mighty… Well, are the cheese, the mighty? I'm not sure about that anymore. But a big win for the Packers coming off, obviously a huge Thanksgiving win over the Lions. All of a sudden, Green Bay looks like a team that makes some real noise in a wide-open NFC. Boys, we got to start, unfortunately, and we're going to give the Packers their flowers, but we got to talk about what everybody's going to be talking about, which is an absolute meltdown by the officialating crew in the final minute and a half of this game. I'm actually looking at it right now, boys. There were, you could make the case that they blew five calls in the final 65 seconds of the game.

Patrick O'Hombe scrambles out of bounds at the KC 40 for 10 yards. They penalized Owens on Green Bay for unnecessary roughness. Bogus call, not the right call, not.

Even a question. And was an emphasis by the rules committee in the offseason to not let quarterbacks bait defenders into those calls, and they.

Still miss. Terry McCauley comes in for NBA says, Hey, this is the wrong call. You cannot throw a flag here. The very next play, Patrick Mohomes to Rasheed Rice for 10 yards. He's down by contact. They rule it a fumble. That gets overturned on review, but that even has a butterfly effect by missing that call and ruling Rice up when the ball comes out. That leads to the Pachenko fight, Isiah Pachenko fight, where he takes a swing and he gets suspended. That's a missed call, overturned on review.

That took about 27 minutes, it felt like, for them to sort all that out.

Then you have Patrick Mohomes dropping back to pass and he unfurls a deep ball to Marques Valdez to Scantling, a clear pass interference. Once again, no doubt about it. They do not throw the flag. Again, they bring in McCauley, and McCauley says, Yeah, that is obvious pass interference. But it should also be said that MVS also made a catch on the play prior to that, where his forward momentum had stopped and he's moving backwards as he's pushed out of bounds. But the Sidejow's rules that he was able to stop the clock, that's a blown call. Then finally, and I know this one is going to be one especially Packer fans are going to say, Shut up, Dan, but a hell Mary throw, and it's not really even a hell Mary, guys. It was from the 33-yard line. Travis, Kelsey gets a two-handed in the back as the ball is approaching the end zone, taking him out of the play. Yes, Greg, you can say on that play, nobody throws the flag there. But one, he took essentially the guy most capable of making that play out of the play with a two-handed shove and two, Man, I know make-up calls exist.

If there's a way to make up for the MVS-blown call, maybe throw the flag there. But they didn't and the Packers are the benefiters.

Well, they're all humans, and I don't know who made the non-call.

That's the problem. We got to get some AI refs in here.

I don't know who made the non-call on the past interference to Valda Scantling. It should have been a past interference. It was Corey Valentine that was in coverage. That, to me, in the moment, felt like a make-up non-call, essentially, from the Mohomes. Because that happened right after the Mohomes, which they blew that call. It was brutal. I don't know if they somehow knew that they blew that call, but they were suddenly in the crosshairs. They helped the Chiefs get to that point. Then right after that was the throw down the field. That was the one of all of these that was truly egregious and probably changed the game. I think it's worth pointing out. Probably, yes.

It's first intended to six, Greg, or.

First to goal. -okay, it's first. They struggled twice in the red zone tonight and they had to hit a two-point conversion and there's overtime. It changed how the whole rest of the game would have gone. But just worth noting, you don't know that the result of the game is.

Going to have to change.

It's still brutal.

Right, it's like we were saying before we recorded, it wasn't like any one of these calls is going to stir up the competition committee to look at things differently. The combination of all of them, though, suggested a official gaggle of officials who seemed completely out of control. There was just an air of the game was melting down. It's like, Who's in charge here and why is this taking so long? None of it was so overly complex that it should have looked the way it did to us. When you got McCauley, I thought he did a good job. He came on three or four times and forcefully said, wrong, wrong call. I guess for me, the whole thing, they are human, but the concept of a make-up call is not how things should be done. It's like if you made one mistake, you don't then allow yourselves to visibly make another without telling us what's going on. It looked like they were falling further and further from an element.

Of control. I think that MVS no call, given the stakes, is one of the worst non calls I've seen, period. That was one of the worst blown DPI calls you could possibly see. The fact that it was dead center in the middle of the field, no question about it, it can't happen. You know what? I mentioned it earlier in this episode. I guess I had my eyes. On a typical Sunday, we're going to have our eyes individually on about five games pretty closely. Almost every game I watched today, there were really bad mistakes being made by the affiliating. I hate talking about this because obviously you want to focus on what Jordan Love and the.

Packers are doing. We'll get to it.

We have to talk about it. I know on Park Avenue that they're going to be talking about it first thing Monday morning because it's affecting the quality of the product.

It's just rare that there's two calls in that spot. Patrick Mohomes in Lambo, Sunday Night Football, the biggest stage we have, a really unique, entertaining game in that you have two calls. I'm separating the the homes hit out of bounds in the first pass interference non-call. That's just clearly wrong. No one's going to argue that. We will see the pool reports. They might be out by the time we finish talking in these 10 minutes. They will have to just admit we missed those calls. They were absolutely crystal clear. It's pretty unique. I can't remember any game in this spotlight where there's a cavalry to call it like this all in a row. It was a pretty unique circumstance.

The problem is they could admit after what we all see with our.

Own eyes. I'm just guessing they would admit. They try not to, but those two would be.

Tough too. There's just a lack of, I wouldn't say the words accountability, but it's just like when this happens to a team and you get totally hosed on an island game on national television in a circus of officialiating, all it just leaves you with is the loss.

Let's talk about the Packers.

They deserve to lose, too, by the way.

I don't like that.

I just mean teams frits out, players frits out, coaches frits out. Sometimes to your point, I think, Mark, officials often frits out, too.

But I can't live with that. As a fan, I want the officials to do their job and stay out of the way. We're just never going to know really how that game really should have turned out because the officials got.

In the way of it. Yeah, all I mean is they were in that position where they had no timeouts. They had to drive the length of the field in 109 for a touchdown and a two-point to tie. They had put themselves in that position.

They certainly did. The reason they did is because, yeah, for the most part, Packers outplayed the Chiefs in this game. You're seeing it. Matt LaFler, by the way, the bearded boy himself, 16 and a 0 in December Games. The Packers who were left for dead, I think they said on the game telecast, and it checks out because it felt that way, once went 40 days this season without winning a football game. Now you can make the case that outside of the Niners, they're the hottest team in the NFC. They're very interesting, Mark, from that perspective. The thing I'll say about Jordan Love in this one, Mark, and I'm curious what your thoughts are, it's not just the stats that look great right now. It's how confident he's playing and how you could tell he's in control of everything he sees. For a guy that's as young as he is, as inexperienced as he is, and as lost as it seemed he was a month or so ago, it's pretty remarkable, the turnaround.

I think one thing that's wonderful about covering the whole league versus just your team is that you start to see operations just grow up right before your eyes. It's Jordan Love and it's like the offense around him. I thought tonight there were four or five throws. I can think of one to Christian Watson where it's like, he is just throwing with intense confidence and putting into tight windows. There were a couple of drops, but he put the ball right on the money. I just think on top of that, the way he's seen the field, the way he uses his legs and moments, the fact that he's pairing well in a Matt Lifloor offense. Matt LaFloor, two weeks in a row, because Thanksgiving feels like about seven eras ago, two great Matt LaFloor coached games. I think that this is working well because they're all growing up together.

Yeah, I said when they were at their Nadeer, I brought up how in the offseason we said, We're going to learn a lot about Matt LaFleur. I ended it with some smug little thing of like, They are right now one of the worst offenses in the league. You jerk. Okay. Right now, we're going to learn a lot about Matt LaFler this season. He has taken a young quarterback and I think Love deserves the most credit. But I think with the weapons around him and the amount of play action, I hit on Russell Wilson, really relying on play action. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Ryan Taneil did it for years. A lot of teams do it. He is relying on play action as much as any quarterback in the league, and it is hitting. Guys are open. Then when he is doing that back pedal and he has to do something special like that rainbow shot to Romeo Dobbs, which looked like a bad idea, and I don't know how it fell down in there. It still was a... He still got it.

Exactly-the Bermuda.

Triangled it in there. -right. He got exactly where it wanted to go. I think you're right. He's playing with such incredible confidence that when he's doing these back petals and making these crazy throws, I'm almost surprised when he's not hitting them. These are all chunk plays, too, to rookie's, Mylik, Heath, and is that even a person? Don'tavian, Wicks, and just all these guys, 15-25 yard chunk plays. It's pretty awesome.

It's gotten this bad for the Chiefs with their offense. If Patrick Holmes is not handing the ball off or getting the ball in the hands of Chedco, who's a very good running back, or getting it to Travis Kelsey, who's not, dominating of the same clip as past years, or Rashee Rice, who's a consistent guy for them now, is bad news.

But limited. Consistently good, but limited what he does.

Within the realm, like today, he had eight for 64 on nine targets. At least he's a guy that he's not a liability. Everyone else that he's trying to get involved with, whether it's MVS who, yes, got jobbed, but let's base it, probably would have dropped it anyway. Richie James, Clyde Edwards-Lear, Sky Moore, that route he ran on the the Holmes interception. I mean, you're just like, who do you trust? Gaudarius Tony, who's not even on the roster anymore at this point. They have work to do in the offseason to fix it. Again, every time you think maybe they're coming out of it, there's another one of these games that tell you no. There's just a limit to this offense, and it's a stunning subplot of this season.

They're really frustrating when they get into certain situations where in the past you could simply trust or you'd be a fool not to trust the homes to bail you out and to have some targets that would help you, too. But it's like, we're running out of time here. With the Chiefs, we'll see where we are in the playoffs. But you asked that they were mighty still, and I think it's a fair question because you can't just rely on Andy Reed, the mind of Andy Reed and the brilliance of to rescue an offense that it's missing pieces and has been.

All year. They finished the game so ugly, and that's what we'll remember, three and out, then the interception, which was going to be a tough pass, but more really did a terrible job. I knew the effort wasn't even great on it. Yeah, he killed them by slowing down on the route. Keisha Nixon made a really nice interception, too, that you don't see guys make a nice play like that. Then the way that game ended. I should note though, that each of these teams only had seven drives. That is an exceptionally low number for both teams to have in an NFL game. To me, this was like an old Chiefs game where it was like, Oh, man, our defense stinks tonight. We need Patrick Mohomes to answer every single drive. We just haven't seen a Chiefs defense give up points like that. Twenty-seven points in seven drives is terrible. The Chief's even 19 points in seven drives is pretty great. That points per drive, that would just barely lead the league in points per drive, 19 points in seven drives. It just was so limited here. But the Packers were scoring almost every single time. The Chiefs, is their defense going to stay out this level the whole season?

Outstanding. We've seen a little leakage lately. They've had some injuries at linebacker, nick Bolton and Drew Trankler out. That's part of it. Bryan Cook got carded out of this game. They're starting safety. That side of the ball might be creating a little issue, too.

Here's the final stat. It's from Tony Holman, Escarano. He is the NFL media senior researcher. Kansas City, and I know points per drive. I understand it.

I'm saying they were okay tonight. They were.

Pretty good. I know it doesn't feel that way.

Here it is. The Chiefs have scored fewer than 20 points in six games this season. The Chiefs had six such games in Patrick Mahomes' first five seasons as a starter combined.

Yeah, and it looks that way.

That fourth loss is big. They're now behind three teams in the AFC who have three losses. Ravens, Jags, we'll see on Monday night, and the Dolphins. The Packers here at six and six, you look at their schedule and all the projection models now have the Packers. They're golden. They just take care of some business. Who are the 17th as the favorite, as a decent size, over 50 % chance to make.

The playoff. You can think where we'll be potentially in three weeks. They're six and six. They play the giants, the Bucks, and the Panthers before finishing with the Vikings.

And bears. Anything less than two dubs there is a disaster. All right. A disaster. This NFC? They'll be fine. No matter what. They could probably like me. All right, tomorrow, Monday, we got a double header. We got the NFL-plus game of the week. We'll be breaking down the Niners dominant effort against the Eagles. Then Monday night football and news recap. I'm sure there will be maybe some follow-up to everything we just talked about here coming out of Lambo. Until then, you know what you got to do. Hes on the call.