Are NFL Offenses Broken? | Week 4 Reactions

Welcome to the NFL Pro Week 4 Reaction Podcast. Thank you for listening on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show. Is offense in the NFL broken? We are four weeks into the 2026 NFL season and we are already asking that question.

And he fights his way in!

Touchdown Rams! Trevor Sycamore, Brett Coleman here with you guys on another episode of NFL Pro where we are recapping so much of what we saw from the Sunday slate in week four of the NFL. And Brett, all jokes aside, this week teams converted on third down on just 34.4% of their attempts, the lowest rate in a single week since 2017.

See, we can phrase it one of two ways, either offense is broken or defense is back. So we can be optimists or pessimists here.

You know, you've been in the sports media landscape long enough to where the thumbnail needs to be both of us doing this, you know, and it's just offense is broken in the NFL. So no, but there are two sides of the coin. But I think there's some more layers to peel back from it as well.

I mean, the biggest difference between this week and week one is the defenses can now tackle, right? That's what we talked about after week one, all the yards after contact that happened in week one, the super high explosive rates. Every single week since week one, the missed tackle rate specifically on third down is has gotten better. It was 14.6% week one, which is a bad missed tackle rate, down to 12.7% week two, 10.8% week three, 7% as of us recording this, we're not done with week one as of recording, but as of recording this, a 7% missed tackle rate on third down is half of what it was three weeks ago. So yeah, you're not going to convert on third down if you're not breaking any tackles whatsoever,

especially when most third downs are going to be third and seven plus, generally speaking. So I think to me, it's just, defenders kind of shaking the rust off and learning how to tackle and get guys on the ground again.

Yeah, and one of the games, at least one that pops into my mind immediately, this stat came to life. It was that Bengals-Jags game, which we'll talk a little bit more a little bit later in the show, but that 4th and 10 play for the Bengals, Joe Burrow, hit Chase Brown well before the first down mark, and what are you hoping? You're hoping, hey, I'm getting the ball to my guy with momentum, going the direction I want him to go. He's just got to make somebody miss, and it was a great rally and tackle by Jacksonville, and that ended up being the game right there.

And he's upended close to the first down marker.

He's short.

On third and short, so third and one to two yards to gain, 60.3% conversion rate. Okay, it makes sense. That's pretty high. Obviously, you don't have a long way to go. Third and medium, so three to six yards to gain, right around 43.9%. But then also, Brett, third and long, so third and seven plus, just a 15.6% conversion rate. And there were 167 plays that were third and long that go into this.

To me.

That 15.6% conversion rate speaks right to what you were just saying, the missed tackle rate of, hey, we've got these plays where sometimes the quarterbacks feel like they've got to pass it beyond the sticks, and they've got to do the work to get the conversion. But there are other times, certainly we saw this week, where offenses were very clearly motivated to just let their playmakers make plays, and defenses just were not having it this week. And I do think that, all jokes aside from how I intro'd the show, that is a cool thing that defenses have stepped up this much to cut the missed tackle rate from week one in half.

Already and you're pairing a lot of these you know zone coverages with pressure where the entire goal is just to force a quick throw like yeah we'd love to get a sack but really we would just love to speed up the quarterback so that they can't throw deep like that's the whole goal just eliminate the deep pass through pressure like the pressure is the coverage and if we can just force a quick throw and then rally and tackle. That's the entire point of a zero blitz because most quarterbacks are going to identify, okay, there's more rushers than there's blockers. I have to get it out.

You know, the entire goal is just, you have to throw it under five yards and see if you can make us miss. And at least this week, nobody could.

Yeah.

And I think that that's just an overall strategy, like you said, of how you handle these super talented quarterbacks and It was just a little bit of a microcosm of that strategy and that plan working for defenses here in week four. We'll see how the offense is punched back in the next couple of weeks. Maybe it is pushing the ball a little bit further, not as much, hey, dump it off and not giving these teams a chance to rally and tackle. And all of that is a perfect transition to the first game that we wanted to talk about here because lack of third down success very much went into the Philadelphia Eagles not being able to hold on to that game, losing to the Los Angeles Rams.

And we talked in the preview show saying, Whoever loses this game, the short-term outlook at least, we start to hit the panic button a little bit for these teams.

There's execution errors. There's coaching errors. Everybody contributes to it. It's an ultimate team game.

Rams end up winning. Eagles lost a slew of injuries for the Eagles that they've been through this season. But no matter how you slice it, going 0-12 on third down for Philadelphia... I don't care if you had your starters out there to make up for it or what. It's never going to be a recipe for success. 0 for 12 for Philadelphia.

It was the worst third down performance in the history of the Philadelphia Eagles. They've been around for a long time.

I believe it.

That's how bad that was. And it's so easy for people to jump on Jalen Hurts and say it's all his fault or it's all the offensive line's fault, specifically Cam Juergens or the receivers or whatever or Nick Sirianni or Sean Mannion. The reality is if you go 0 for 12, it's everybody's fault. everybody had to be bad for that to happen. And I think they were all bad in their own ways, and they just all combined into this miserable vortex of badness that resulted in O of 12.

Not the vortex of badness!

The vortex of badness. It was hard to watch. Like, genuinely, it was hard to watch. And it was one of those games where they jumped out in front, and they had a... I guess you'd call it a commanding lead, but it didn't feel... real right because you get two interceptions on Matthew Stafford you get a 40 plus yard punt return like that led to 17 points by itself and it just it felt like yes the Eagles were capitalizing on mistakes but it sure felt like man it kind of feels like the Rams are just making a bunch of mistakes here not necessarily that they're getting massively outplayed what happens if the Rams start playing a clean game and we saw that in the second half they started playing like themselves And the weight of the Rams'

talent relative to the weight of the Eagles' talent that they had left that wasn't injured yet, that really bore out in the second half. And I think what was really frustrating for Eagles fans is they could feel that and they knew, not that they were getting away with one, but they knew that this was a game that they probably weren't supposed to win because of all the injuries.

And yet, late in the game, they had a 96% chance to win They were on the Rams' two-yard line. They're up by 10. They can take a 17-0 lead. And you're feeling great as an Eagles fan because this isn't a game that you're supposed to be in, let alone winning this handily. And then that third and two happened.

Speaking of somebody who was a spotter, by the way, back in the day, things happen quickly, right? And the spotters have a few seconds to try to point something out to the broadcast crew before we move on to the next play. especially if it's a third down going into a fourth and goal opportunity. It's hard to see things in real time. And at the time, on that kind of bobbled snap that led to what I guess you can call an improvised run by Jalen Hurts that got stopped short of the goal line, the broadcast crew said, oh, the snap got bobbled, messy exchange happened. it happens, whatever, move on to fourth down.

But again, some of the basic fundamentals, he dropped the snap, can't turn his body in time, and he does a good job getting back to the line of scrimmage. Looks like he had a good crease there for him behind that triple team block.

Oh, so frustrating.

Well, the advantage that you and I have here at NFL Pro is we have access to every single camera angle, whether it made the broadcast or not, in that little 20-second window between third and fourth down. So I took the opportunity to go back and look at every single camera angle and see, was it just a bad snap or did something else happen? And I found two different angles that tell an entirely different story, and this will make Eagles fans sick. Cam Juergens... who's not exactly popular in Philadelphia these days, he false started on this play, but it didn't get called. Eagles fans probably wish it would.

This false start meant that he was pulling early before Jalen Hurts could actually fully get a handle of the snap and then pivot and hand the ball off. And so when Cam Juergens false started and pulled, his hand hit the ball in Jalen Hurts' hand. So that's what caused the bobble, which means he couldn't pivot and hand it off, which means the play got broken. If the exchange happened cleanly, i.e. if Cam Juergens didn't false start, that probably scores. And the Eagles do go up by 17 points. And at that point, that late surge by the Rams likely doesn't matter. And we're talking about a completely different game at that point. All Cam Juergens had to do was not false start and run into Jalen Hurts.

And this is a totally different conversation. But it was a very strong subtle mistake that the broadcast didn't catch at the time. Not that I blame them. Like I had to hunt through 15 different angles to find it, but that's the real story of what happened. And then you get to the fourth and goal situation where we're calling a shotgun pass on fourth and short, which is not something that I like anyway. It wasn't a call that I would have leaned on in that situation. I would have preferred either an under center run or under center play action, but that's neither here nor there. But I just wanted to set the record straight of what happened in that goal line sequence, because that was the game.

The Rams then mounted a 98 yard touchdown drive, completely flipped everything, but it wasn't on Jalen. It was on his left guard. Yeah.

And it was, it was tough sledding.

I think just for the entire Philadelphia offense hurts second highest pressure face in a game in his career, not just this season, but his career. Rams also blitzed on more than 60% of their plays. Highest blitz rate in a single game they've ever had under Chris Shula, their defensive coordinator. 13 pressures, two sacks on 18 blitzes. That's an insanely high success rate. And Hurts versus the blitz, I mean, he wasn't good versus the blitz. Five for 16, 46 total passing yards. He did have a touchdown against the blitz, but like you said, they were kind of barely hanging on. But I want to say this too, not that I just, not that I want this game review to be all negative, but.

Do you really.

feel great about the Rams winning I mean sure they obviously came back and it was kind of vintage of what we saw from the Rams last year when we felt really good about them but I think to myself it took you a long time in the game to get to that point and Brett specifically something that's been bothering me about the Rams was their their lack of separation for wide receivers they have the lowest average separation to their pass catchers in the NFL at just 3.0 this season Now, I looked at it last year. They were also the lowest in the NFL at 3.1. So it's basically the same offense. The only difference is Matthew Stafford was playing at an insanely accurate MVP level last year, and he's not this year. And that little margin for error.

is now turning into a big margin for error for this team. So look, maybe this is the kick in the pants that they needed, but man, I don't know how much better I feel about the Rams, even the fact that they got the win in this game. This offense still looks incredibly difficult every single week, and they just happened to go up against a Philadelphia team that was 0 for 12 on third down, could have still won the game anyways at the goal line, like you mentioned.

It was just, this game was two teams that have playoffs aspirations that I feel like it was a mess. Any final thoughts on this one before we move on to the next game?

It's the kind of game that even if you win, You know, you're silently staring out the window for the rest of the evening, just saying, oh, my God, how did we survive that? Like nobody actually won that one. You just live through it.

Well, the Rams survived it.

And I suppose that's all that really matters, given the schedule that they have upcoming, because they play the Buffalo Bills next.

We tried to, you know, do a lot of things that were not in alignment with what is winning football.

But you can't win it until the fourth quarter.

And our guys came alive when they did.

We got to talk about the undefeated matchup of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders because the people have been in the comments for a couple of weeks on us saying, hey, we got to talk about the Raiders more. Got to talk about the Raiders more. We previewed the game last week on the Friday episode.

And I got to say, man, this game absolutely lived up to the billing. This was a fantastic showdown. And when we were going through our picks for who we thought was going to win this game, I talked about how, hey, I'm taking the Chiefs. But I think this is going to be a really close game. I didn't even think that it would be this close. This game was a ton of fun until the very end. And we just came off of a game where I said, I don't know if I'd feel good if I was either team, the Rams or the Eagles. I'd kind of feel great if I'm either team, the Chiefs or the Raiders.

And I know the Raiders are going to say, hey, no moral victories, no more.

But you got to think about what this team was even just last year. You know, you're right there with the Kansas City Chiefs, given how good this team is playing. And I'll talk about Mahomes a little bit more in a second, but what'd you think about this game? What's your main takeaway here from Raiders-Chiefs?

Man, they gave them all they could handle. Like, yeah. It was right there for the taking. And to get two touchdowns in 19 seconds, it was indicative of the kind of program the Chiefs are. Like, last year notwithstanding, last year was just, let's talk about a vortex of badness, the 2025 Chiefs. But this is what this team has always been. They find a way in the fourth quarter.

You know, they get a big play on special teams. I would say two big plays on special teams between the punch out by Jeff Bassa and then the incredible punt coverage that got down to the one yard line. That third phase really showed up for Kansas City in a matchup that we thought was going to be, you know, not defined by, but we knew that special teams was going to be a big factor in this one because these were two good special teams units going at it.

In this game, in terms of special teams EPA per play, Kansas City was plus. 27, Vegas uncharacteristically uncharacteristically. was minus. 27, and it was largely because of that fumble on the kickoff return. And that was kind of the difference in the game. These two teams were going blow for blow. They were making plays on offense, they were making plays on defense. The Raiders were frustrating them, but Mahomes hit these two big bombs deep down the field. One to Xavier Worthy early on, one to Tyquan late in the game.

Unfortunately resulted in a horrific injury to Tyquan Thornton, and we hope he heals up. But as far as the play itself, it was exactly what they needed. You know, I thought the Raiders defensive staff was probably incensed because this was not a man coverage team on third down going into this week. They were not a big blitz team on third down going into this week. And yet those two deep shots on third down were against man blitzes.

I'm sure they're like, how did they know that was coming? Because they were perfect play calls against man blitzes in my homes at both of them. So I just I love this game, man. The coaches were great. The players were great. It was back and forth, all three phases. This was damn good football.

Yeah, look, if you're the Raiders, you would have liked to defend the run a little bit better. Kenneth Walker, 22 carries, 177 rushing yards, which is a new career high after he set his previous career high in week one of this season. So, look, Kenneth Walker was unbelievable, but he's been unbelievable the entire season. If you are a Raiders fan and if you're in that locker room, you got to feel good about the game plan that you put out there when it came to stopping Patrick Mahomes, because you mentioned this Mahomes did most of his damage.

against the cover zero plays that he faced. Mahomes in this game, four for five, 102 passing yards, one touchdown, no interceptions, and a 158.3 passer rating against cover zero. You look at all the other coverages that he faced against cover three, which he saw more than 40% of the time in this game. Six for 12, 41 passing yards, 58 passer rating. I mean, cover four, three for six for 60 yards, and he had a touchdown, which helps the QBR, but It's like, you look at so many of these other statistics for Mahomes' passing. 9 for 21 on passes where he had more than 2.5 seconds to throw the ball. A lot of times, if you don't get to Mahomes, if Mahomes has got more time to throw it, he's going to find the guy. He's going

to absolutely kill you if you don't get to him. And in fact, it was the opposite. They played so well in coverage for such an extended period of time. His average time to throw was over 3 seconds in this game, and it was not effective.

At least not. outside of the man coverage reps that he faced. So I look at this game and I go, God, the Raiders are so close. The Raiders are so close.

And even with everything that we just talked about there, if you don't have the fumble on special teams there in the fourth quarter, you may have still won this game.

So to me, I know.

Everybody hates moral victories, but you gotta feel good if you're a Raiders fan with this game.

I think it's bittersweet, right? Because you know you can hang. And you know that the 3-0 start wasn't fraudulent because you hung with this team and you had them on the ropes. And I think if I'm a Raiders fan, I am upset because it's an opportunity, but you know it's not the only opportunity. And that's the key takeaway.

They're not going to go away. They are in this race, especially when you've got the Texans falling to 0-4, the Chargers falling to 0-4. Good teams are playing bad all over the league, and here you have the Raiders losing. surging to a 3-1 start and hanging with a team that we all expect to be there in the end.

If I'm the Raiders, I'm thinking, okay, I'm not just going to be the plucky 7 seed. I might be able to make a play for the AFC West here. And if I'm a Raiders fan, it feels pretty damn good because I don't remember the last time Raiders fans could actually think about that in October.

First of all, don't call us plucky. We don't know what it means.

Laughter That's a fancy word. I'm going to take that as an insult.

Shout out to Avengers Infinity War for that one. By the way, before we move on, Kirk Cousins continues to look good.

Dude, 31 for 52. That's right.

I said 31, and then the second number that I mentioned, which was the amount of attempts that he had in the game, was 52.

It's the first.

Time that he's had that many passing attempts since week five in 2024 when he had 58 passing attempts against... Yeah, of course, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 365 passing yards in this game, though. To me, Brett, I love what Kirk brings to the table. We have talked about this multiple times. The way that he is playing, you understand why Fernando Mendoza is still on the sideline. Because it's that veteran presence, especially, I always look at those play-action plays, where Clint Cooper...

is asking Kirk Cousins to fully turn his back to the line of scrimmage and to the defense, really sell the play-action, and then immediately turn around, and he knows exactly what he is going to see. You only get that from reps, from experience, from years in the league. And having those play-action plays and yet still a decisive ability to get the ball out of your hands quickly exactly where it needs to go, that's what we're seeing from Kirk. And so I feel really good about where Kirk Cousins is right now. And I wouldn't have said that, certainly the last couple of years that he was in Atlanta, I was not saying that. And I wondered if it was like, all right, you signed Kirk Cousins to start early on this team ahead of Fernando Mendoza, but is

that more pageantry than anything else?

It is not. Kirk Cousins can still play in this league, and I think that we saw that today.

Especially compared to the recent historical quarterback performances up in Minnesota. I'm going to refrain from saying something that will make Vikings fans even more sad than they already are.

How sad can you be at 4-0? How sad can you be at 4-0?

Not all 4-0 is the same, man. They had 72 plays and scored 15 points. Come on, man.

Those 15 points were enough to get the win. It wouldn't have been close to getting the win against Dallas and Houston today, who, man, 64 total points in this next game that we're hitting here.

Dallas comes away with the win.

And the exact opposite of 4-0 is, unfortunately, what the Houston Texans are in this game.

I don't know.

When you think of the Cowboys and the Texans, this matchup, is the takeaway more about the Cowboys or is it more about the Texans?

What do you think? Where do you want to start with this one?

Would you rather get into a shootout with the Dallas Cowboys or John Wick? I kind of go back and forth. I think you're dead either way. And the Texans still chose to do it.

I've seen all four movies, and yeah, I think that you are dead either way. So, yeah. And I've seen all four Cowboys games to start the season.

So, yes. It's just box office. I mean, both, the John Wick movies and the Cowboys offense. Oh, 100%.

I'm there opening weekend every single time. Doesn't matter.

The movies are exactly the same. The movies are exactly the same every single time. And I'm basically front row every single time on opening weekend. But that is how the Cowboys offense feels.

I literally don't care. It's like, oh, I'm going to watch Keanu just do crazy stuff for the next two hours?

Great. I'm going to watch Dak and CD.

That's Dak.

Yeah, once we got to like 15 catches... I pretty much understood where this was going. And then they just added a few more on top of that.

What about the 16th one? What about the 17th one?

They just couldn't stop him. They could not stop CD lamb. And this was a good secondary. Like, it's not like Derek Stingley and Kabari Lassiter and Jalen Petrie and Bullock. Like they can all play. I mean, the season doesn't look like they can, but in theory, in a vacuum, they're good DBs. This is a good secondary. And they just got cooked in this game. CD was getting open at will. George Pickens made a catch in this game where he wasn't open at all and still made it anyway because he's George Pickens. Like Dak was on a heater.

If you're looking at just his passing stats over 15 yards, this is absurd. He was 6 of 7 for 148, so almost 150 yards in just seven attempts here. A 158.3 rating. That is perfect. He had a touchdown. a yards per attempt of 21.1. So he got anything he wanted deep down the field, even against this Texans defense.

Under 15 yards was still pretty damn good as well, but it was really the explosive plays that were the difference in this one. The stars came out, man, no pun intended. I just, C.J. Stroud played great and it didn't matter. It really didn't matter at all.

Kamari Lassner, you brought his name up and Kamari, man, he's a hell of a corner, but allowed eight receptions for 136 yards on 11 targets and over 50 coverage snaps played today. This is one of, I got to think it's got to be the worst Kamari Laster game that he has played so far in his career because he is only getting better. Brett, I was looking this up with the Texans defense because I had these question marks myself because you're right, this was not a CJ Stroud issue type of a game. It'd be one thing if the defense was playing as good as it was last year and CJ was consistently struggling. It'd be an easy thing to just say, hey, the offense isn't working.

And look, going into this week, they were struggling on short yardage situations, converting on the ground when it came to those third and fourth and short situations. So that's still something to monitor throughout this season. But when you play the way that the offense did today, you give yourself a chance to win ball games. And this defense should have been able to win them this ball game, even against the Cowboys secondary. But I tried to look up some stats for The Texans so far this year versus what they were last year. And I was like, man, are they playing more zone and more man? No, the rates are pretty much the same. Are they playing more cover three? Are they playing more cover four? More split

safety stuff? More single high safety stuff? No, the rates are kind of the same. Okay, well, what about separation from receivers? You know, are they giving up more average separation when the ball's getting there?

Not really.

The only difference that I could find really with the Texans... is something that every coach preaches, honestly. They are the worst team in the NFL so far through four weeks when it comes to explosive play rate allowed. They are over 20%, 21.4% of the time they are giving up an explosive play. It was just 16 and a half last season. And then when you look at them as a turnover defense last year. They were top 10 in the NFL in fumbles, recovered, and they were third in the NFL in total interceptions last season. So far through four weeks this year, one recovered fumble, one interception. You're giving up more explosive plays. You're not taking the ball away.

The rest of the stuff, like you mentioned, this is a talented secondary. This is a talented defensive line. This is a talented team. They're just not coming away with the big plays on their end, and they're giving up way more big plays on the offense's end. And until that changes, we're not going to be able to talk about this Texans team as a turnaround type of a team.

And even now, the 0-4 hole, I mean, forget the division. I mean, you're just hoping you make the playoffs at this point. You are hoping that there is some way that you make the playoffs. It's only been done.

Once, by the way.

I was literally a baby. It was the early 90s Chargers, the only team that's ever dug out of an 0-4 hole to make the playoffs. I think it was 92 off the top of my head. And maybe, okay, the 17th game gives them a little bit more wiggle room because there was less tolerance for it when there was a 16-game schedule. But even then, you can lose maybe two more games the entire rest of the year, and we have a lot of games to play. And I don't really have a lot of confidence in them doing that, so... Yeah, I have egg on my face. I thought this team could have challenged for the AFC. I never in a million years thought it was going to be the defense that's the issue. Meanwhile, C.J. Stroud, I just want to

read off his numbers and give him his flowers. He was not the problem. He had a 126.7 passer rating. He was 11.2 yards per attempt. His completion percentage over expected was 14.2%. Drop back success rate was 57.1%. We praise the Cowboys. That's like 13% higher in drop back success rate than even Dallas was today. They had 51 plays the entire game and put up like 400 yards of offense. Like CJ was awesome. I never thought the defense would be the problem with this team.

Really quick. I'm going to really quick.

I'm going to list off the schedule because this is, this is actually more interesting than I thought it was going to be for the Texas schedule.

Cause we, we, we talked about it being dire. Okay.

It's at Tennessee next week. It's overseas versus the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Okay, neutral site game.

Versus the Giants by week at the Chargers, at the Browns, versus the Colts, versus the Ravens, at the Steelers, at the Commanders, versus Jacksonville, at Philadelphia, at Green Bay, versus Tennessee.

It's doable.

Boy, it's doable.

To go on a run, it's doable.

You have to thread every needle while hitting every green light to do it. They did it from 0-3 last year. If they could do it from 0-4 this year.

That's the thrill, baby. That's the thrill. That's being alive. That's being a Texans fan. This sucks, Trevor. This is why you watch.

You're just lucky I don't make you do a segment on the Bucs every week. I have to do a segment on the Texans every week. I'm the only one that has to validate my trauma on this.

Show, not you.

Hey, the Bucs segment happened on Saturday when we got to watch future Buccaneer Jeremiah Smith do his thing once again for Ohio State, but we can talk about that when we get more to draft season.

Cincinnati.

Jags get out of Cincinnati with a win here, a hard-fought victory, that is for sure. This game definitely lived up to the billing. It wasn't as top-tier execution on offense type of a game like maybe we thought with a potential firework show, but Jamar Chase goes out of this game. Tee Higgins goes out of this game for a little bit. The Jags' offense wasn't quite explosive. But, Brett, where I want to start this is to give flowers to the Jags' defense and how they're playing. Because the Bengals had just 23 total rushing yards on 15 carries in this game. And I think a lot of that has to do with how we started this show. And how we talked about teams being willing to give you things underneath and then rally and tackle. Jags, 81% zone

drops defensively. a 19% blitz rate in this game. They were going to rush with four. They were going to keep guys back in zone coverage. And when you threw it underneath, they were going to be ready to rally and tackle. A less than 10% missed tackle rate from Jacksonville in this game. To me, that is what their game plan was going into it. And they executed this beautifully.

Everyone on the team was ready for a run fit whenever the Bengals were going to go to the run game. And they were ready to rally to the football anytime that it was some sort of a short pass between zero and nine yards. And clearly it frustrated Joe Burrow as well with a couple of throws that you go, man.

Joe Burrow normally didn't make those kinds of throws. And I think it was just that mounting frustration of how Anthony Camp and I was calling this game as the defensive coordinator of the Jags.

And I just thought it was an excellent job.

Liam Cohen gets a lot of praise on this coaching staff for the offensive side of the ball. But I wanted to give the flowers to the defensive side of the ball as well. The Jags are a complete team. And I think through four weeks, they've shown that they can win on the offense and the defensive side of the ball.

It's tough to win ugly games. I mean, it's tough to win any game in the NFL, but especially the ugly games. It's kind of the theme of today is teams winning ugly. There were 24 total penalties in this one. 13 were on Jacksonville. 11 were on Cincy.

So they didn't necessarily get the benefit of the refs in this one. There were 200 penalty yards between the two teams.

It was terrible. It was not a good game to watch on TV, at least until the second half. because there was 18 penalties in the first half alone out of 24. Like it was hard to get into a flow. And as a player, like it's one thing to be a fan and not be able to get in the flow of the game. As a player, it's really hard to get into the flow of the game when it's just stopping every two minutes or even faster than that, just because of constant penalties on both teams. And you don't know what down and distance you're in because it keeps changing every 30 seconds. So It was tough, not to mention three touchdowns got nullified by penalty in this one, two of them for Jacksonville. Weirdly enough, first and 10

in the red zone on the Bengals' last drive, that's when they decided to not call penalties. And to me, there was like a clear pass interference on that first and 10. DB got there early. No call on that one. And that's what frustrates me the most, because if you're going to call 24 penalties in a game, it better be consistent. Like, if we're all going to be miserable, we should all be equally miserable here. But whatever. I'm not bitter at all. But it was a tough game to watch, and I think really the stabilizing forces here were the Jacksonville defense, to your point, and Trevor Lawrence.

He took care of the ball. He didn't throw any back-breaking picks and make things harder on his team than they needed to be. He made good throws. He made good decisions. And they were just the more stable team through all that chaotic– mess of a game that this was bam cohen had a good day yes and no i take issue with the game management decisions they made at the end of this one that i think potentially gave cincinnati a way to to backdoor this one and come back they were at midfield it's fourth and three if you get this first down the game's over essentially NGS has like they track decisions that coaches make on fourth downs and they'll give you the expected win probability based on if you go for it, if you kick,

if you punt, all that everything. NGS had a strong go for it there at plus 4.7% win probability. I personally would have gone for it there knowing Joe Burrows on the other side and he's in the middle of a heater throwing 10 straight completions. even though Jamar's out of the game, like you still got T Higgins at that point. Like I just, I don't trust it. I would rather put.

I wonder if that, I wonder if that went into it for them. I wonder if Liam was a little bit like they don't have Jamar.

So I feel like it's still Joe and T.

No, I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying that like it's, it's, it totally against it. Cause I do understand what you're saying. I just wonder if that maybe went into him going like, Hey, they don't have, they don't have Jamar.

It's possible. But the fact that they, intentionally took the penalty and then punted. And then since he drove right down the field anyway, right. And got to the red zone where, in my opinion, the non call or the missed call on PI that should have been called happened. Jacksonville held on fourth and 10, but even earlier in the game, like there was a different fourth and opportunity from Cincinnati's 41 yard line that they also punted on.

They were in Cam Little's range. Cam Little's range is like 10 yards, even more than that. And they punted.

Cam Little's range is on the other side of the 50.

Put him in the parking lot. I don't care.

He's going to kick a field goal. Do you remember the early Madden games? Like Matt, I think it was like Madden 04 where you could buy like the trading cards and then activate them sometimes during the game.

And one of them was like unlimited kick power.

So you can, if you, if you played this trading card, you could kick it from like your own one yard line and it would go the distance. You still had to aim it correctly, I think, but it would actually go 100 yards if you played this card.

That feels like Cam Little a little bit right now in his career.

You're like factoring in the Coriolis effect for a field goal. You do.

You need to do it.

Yeah.

But I just, I don't understand, like, if you have that kind of weapon at kicker, why are you punting from the 41, like your opponent's 41 yard line? So Liam, I think he, he got away with one little bit in this game, but you know, a win's a win. We'll take it.

Okay, those are our deep dives, but we've heard you guys in the comments that you want us to talk about more games, so we're going to try to do that here. We're going to go to a little whip around, go through a lot of the games that we didn't touch on for the deep dives, and just say something from our observations that we've seen in the data or what we watched today on film. First one is the Green Bay Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Begrudgingly, I am bringing this up, Brett, because we had to talk about the Texans, and we had to do that, and unfortunately you had to slog through that and so I will acknowledge the fact that the Tampa Buccaneers are also an 0-4 football team and lost to the Green Bay Packers.

Packers used 13 personnel on 16 plays in week four gained 128 yards the team's most plays and yards in that heavy of a personnel and 13 personnel in a game in the next gen stat era which is since 2016 so heavy personnel packages and I think Brett That's exactly how you're going to go after this Buccaneers team.

The linebacker level, not great. And it's just the defense is all over the place for the Buccaneers.

Can we talk about Lucas Van Dess? Where did this come from?

I mean, what are you talking about? First round pick? First round pick? First round pick?

I realize that, but he was left for dead this offseason.

I know, I know. He's been a lot better this year. Yes, you were right. You are right. He's been great. He's been great.

So good for him.

He has been great. Jalen Daniels getting the start for the Buccaneers.

I thought he looked fine for what you would want these expectations to be, but it's a mess in Tampa in a lot of different ways. The Tennessee Titans and the Baltimore Ravens, the return of the king, King Henry, coming back in this game. Baltimore wins it pretty easily.

I'm not going to lie.

I mean, Tennessee is just not really competitive this season. Specifically, we get another big Zay Flowers game in this one. He was a major factor every single time that he is out there when he is healthy.

His presence, I think, makes all the difference in the world. I think that the.

Tennessee Titans offense is still just so all over the place right now.

And it's just, yeah, it's just, it's so inconsistent.

You can have some big plays, but then you've just got some absolute stinkers and some stretches of the game where you're getting nothing from your offense, at least not what you need to. Cam Ward, now has the same amount of career losses as your Marcus Russell.

You know, not great.

I like Cam Ward. I think he's a hard worker. I think he is yet another quarterback that unfortunately needed a different situation than the one that he got drafted into. To me, it's no different than Sam Darnold, Geno Smith. These quarterbacks, they have a ton of talent. They're good people. They're hard workers. They're just not ready yet. But when you get drafted that high, you have to play. And he wasn't ready to play. And I it's just it's bad timing. The timelines do not align. And that's why I'm so happy that Fernando Mendoza doesn't have to play in Vegas this year, because I think it would have been maybe similar, even though the talent in Vegas this year is better than the talent in Tennessee. It's just

some guys, not even some, a lot of quarterbacks come out of college are not ready to play I think he was one of them, and it's just unfortunate.

Especially in today's age, where it feels like if you get picked in the first round, let alone be a number one overall pick, you start right away.

No questions asked.

And I just think that's a horrible rule to have for young quarterbacks. But that's a topic much deeper for another time. Denver and San Francisco. San Francisco ends up winning this game. Man, Bo Nix completed just one of nine passes down the field of 10 or more air yards for 30 yards. Did not attempt a deep pass of 20 or more air yards until... under two minutes in the fourth quarter. You talked about this last week.

It can't just be fourth quarter. And it just, it feels so conservative for them.

It was over three on deep attempts.

I mean, it was just, uh, far too conservative for the Broncos for whatever reason. It just, you've got to get more before we get to the fourth quarter and the two minute trail where you're just, you're, you're letting it fly after that.

It's too late.

I still have to go back and look at the all 22 for every single play. Um, I'm very curious if it's he didn't do it because nothing was open or he didn't do it because he didn't trust it, which to me are two very different things. But having having an average air yards per attempt. deep into the second half of under four yards like.

You won't win that way you won't win football games yes You'll barely win football games doing that with prime Derrick Henry as your running back. It's just like you have to be more of a threat to pass. The Chargers and the Seahawks. Chargers did make it interesting there at the end, but it kind of just felt like this was always Seattle's game to win, and they do win this one. The Chargers drop to 0-4 on the season.

To me, the Seattle Seahawks, their defense won the day in this one. Only 7.5 missed tackle rate for Seattle. 56.3% pressure rate on the day. Had a 4-1 turnover ratio in their favor. Justin Herbert continues to just look broken. Justin Herbert's two interceptions... Brett, the first one was bad. Second one was worse. There are times when I don't know what he's looking at. He's firing it right to defenders, and it just, going back to when we were worried about what we saw in week one, it just reeks of frustration already so early in the season. And man, he has just been a shell of the potential that he has early on this season.

Honestly, my main takeaway beyond... Justin Herbert not looking like Justin Herbert. We complained about the number of penalties in Jacksonville Cincy. This one had 30. There were 30 penalties in this game. We thought 24 was bad.

That's crazy. Wasn't it almost 300 yards of penalties between the two teams?

I got to look what the exact.

Total penalty yardage was.

It was 280.

That's awful. This game also started with back-to-back interceptions on the first two plays of the game. This was gross. This was gross football. I don't think anybody enjoyed it on either side. Everybody's happy just to be done with this game. We're moving on to Week 5. It was bad.

The refs almost outgained the Seahawks.

The Seahawks had 286 total yards.

Um.

Jets and the Bears, man, I can keep this one pretty quick. Bears won this game. Bears had 34 first downs in this game. Jets had 32 total offensive plays. I mean, when you look at time of possession, when you look at first downs, I mean, it's just, it is the most lopsided, non-competitive matchup you can find in a long, long time here with this game.

You had Bears defensive players after the game saying like they weren't even sore. It was the Easiest game they'd ever played in their life.

I saw Devin Bush say he was bored.

He wasn't on the field. Like, they were barely out there. Like, I was messaging Connor after the game because I thought that stat was fake. I was like, there's no way that's real. And, you know, a gleefully masochistic Jets fan that Connor is, immediately was like, yup.

That's what happened.

That's what I just had to watch today.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Incredible.

A little rapid fire here on the last three games that we have. The Colts and the Commanders, they played this game in London. The Colts take the victory. Look, the Commanders were already down to their second quarterback in Mariota.

He goes out of the game.

Ethan Kaliak-Manis came in and had some really nice throws once he kind of got warmed up, but it took him a little while to get warmed up, and it was just too much of Indianapolis. Indianapolis is one of those teams where they kind of play to the same baseline every single week, and Some teams have a good chance of playing above that baseline. But if you don't at least hit that baseline, they're going to beat you.

And that feels like the story of the Indianapolis Colts this season.

Daniel Jones was bad in the first half. Can we just acknowledge that?

I don't think the Colts were great at a lot today. They just happened to play undrafted free agent QB3. And that's how you get the victory today.

He was 12 of 22.

This is all in the first half, by the way. 12 of 22, 86 yards, no touchdowns. an interception, a fumble lost 44.9 passer rating, 3.9 yards per attempt. They just took the ball out of his hands in the second half. So Jonathan Taylor, you do your thing. They had more design runs than passes in the second half, which because they had a lead, they could do that.

Exactly. Right.

Right.

And you have Jonathan Taylor, but Daniel Jones was an anchor on this team. I, and I, I don't know what happened to the version of Daniel Jones that was so good in the first half of last year before he got injured. It was really before the broken leg, not even before the Achilles, maybe like first eight weeks of the season. That's gone. Like it hasn't come back yet this year. And I don't know if we're ever going to see it again.

The Giants get a win over the Arizona Cardinals. Brett, I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know how the Giants won this game.

The Giants had 12% less overall success rate than the Arizona Cardinals did. They had a 28.6% design success rate.

I mean, that's incredibly low.

They had almost quadrupled the percentage of a missed tackle rate compared to the Arizona Cardinals. There were so many stats that you look at in this game that you go, yeah, okay, I think the Cardinals won this game.

And they didn't. They lost by 12.

Obviously, the pig six to the end sort of is just, you know, an icing on the cake with this one. But this game was just hilarious to me that it was the Giants winning by more than 10 points. You look at so many of the statistics and you go, yeah, the Giants really struggled in this game. But a dub is a dub, and they're sitting here at 3-1.

The win probability chart's hilarious to look at because it starts out super heavy Cardinals, then super heavy Giants, and super heavy Cardinals, and super heavy Giants, and then it spikes at the end with the Marvin DPI, and then you get to pick six from banks.

Right.

That's a matter. This game was just wacky. This was wacky football. It was fun.

Last thing, Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins. Minnesota's offense is so ugly. 72 plays, scored 15 total points. 0-3 in the red zone. Didn't have a single deep passing attempt the entire game. I don't really know what to think of Minnesota at this point, but hey, they're 4-0. And on the other side of things, Jacob Rodriguez, 18 tackles.

So shout out to Rookie. Doing great today.

Yeah, that was like an average Texas Tech Saturday if anybody watched Jacob Rodriguez.

That's very true. That's very true.

He is a tackling machine.

Yeah.

And I think he's probably the early frontrunner for defensive rookie of the year. He could very easily lead the lead the league in stops, tackles, like just everything. He's a unit and a great guy too, by the way. Talked to him at the combine. He's a bundle of joy and a very, very good linebacker. But on the Viking side of things, I can't believe they're 4-0. I cannot believe this particular brand of football is 4-0. I get we want to be like a hard-nosed defense running team, but you got to get something from the quarterback position. Something.

And they're not, and they're still 4-0. To me, Brian Flores should just wrap up assistant coach of the year already. They wouldn't be 4-0 without him. But I... How do Vikings fans do this every week? It's awful. It's miserable to watch. It's entertaining when the defense is on the field.

They're 4-0, Brett. What do you mean?

It's just like watching... Our.

Teams are a combined 0-8.

But at least they're entertaining.

This is bad TV.

I'll allow you to be a bad football team. You can't be bad TV and a bad football team.

Pick a struggle. You'd much rather be entertaining.

I learned from a very young age, you can be mean or you can be ugly. You can't be both. And that's the Minnesota Vikings this season. It's just awful.

Beautiful way to wrap up the show. There we go, folks. Week four in the books.

Ton to discuss, ton to go over, and there's a lot of film, a lot of data for us to comb through over the next couple of days before the episode on Friday where we take all this information, pack it up, give you a little bit of review stuff, but really take that into what you are going to see in Week 5, of course. If you follow NFL Pro, you know that's coming up on Friday.

We'll see you guys then.

Thank you for listening to our Week 4 Reaction Podcast. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Are NFL Offenses Broken? | Week 4 Reactions

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