Brett Kollmann & Trevor Sikkema’s Week 3 Preview

Welcome to the NFL Pro Week 3 Preview Podcast. Thank you for listening on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you guys get your podcasts. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show. The theme of the day is aggression.

Everybody's blitzing. It's not just Brian Flores. Although Brian Flores is blitzing a lot. I tell our guys all the time, if we're going to go down, we're going to go down a certain way. He's sacked! It does feel like so far this NFL season is just a race to the top in terms of who could be the biggest psychopath.

Don't challenge Brian Flores because he's already at crazy levels. And hearing you say that anybody might even be within the realm of conversation with him. Could take us to DEFCON 1 numbers when it comes to how many resources Brian Flores is going to send at the line of scrimmage.

But you're right.

We're going to do a lot of things here.

On this show.

We're still going to preview some of the big games that are coming up for Week 3. But specifically, you and I and the team, when everybody talked about it, we're two weeks into the season. We are kind of starting to see some trends that I think are at least worth pointing out and working. One of them is how defenses are kind of fighting back here. Before the season, you and I talked about, hey, the air raid style is dead. We talked about these more condensed sets from offenses.

And defenses are now not just containing those, but we've seen in the numbers early on, they're kind of punching back here, which is pretty fascinating to see.

Yeah, it's all about meeting aggression with aggression, right? And I think... One small sliver of that that I want to highlight. So we had talked briefly, honestly probably should talk more about it, after the Australia game, right? The Niners really put it to the Rams. They were doing some fun stuff with Juszczyk on motions, where they would basically motion him sort of, kind of, into being a fullback, but he's on the move as the ball's being snapped, and then he would just open back up, and they would do these really fast inserts. And what that does is it really, it kind of ups the pace that a defense has to react to you. Not only are you creating a new gap on the fly, but you're doing so at warp speed, right? And so it's really

hard for linebackers to react to that. It's really hard for defensive linemen to react to that. And we almost saw like an immediate adjustment in week two of like, oh, okay, if we're going to be getting these inserts on the fly, Mike McDonald did this also in the NFC West against the Cardinals this week. And we see a very similar thing, right?

We're motioning somebody into the backfield. He's not violating the rules technically because he's not going forward, but he is carrying that momentum as an insert. And what do we see the Seahawks do? They're in what's called a tight front here. So we've got the four eye. We've got the zero nose. We've got the four eye. You have a bubble here between the right tackle and the tight end.

That's where the insert's going to try to go on the fly. They want to get up to Witherspoon quickly. So what the Seahawks do is, okay, we're going to slant this four eye into that gap. This insert is going at full speed. So he can't adjust and run off the inside hip of the tackle. Like what a normal fullback would do when starting from a static position, because they have time to correct their angle. You have no time to correct your angles. You're getting a two for one here. Witherspoon's blitzing. You get a run through and a pretty much a free tackle for loss. And so that's really the theme that we're seeing with some of these early down blitzes is, okay, if we're going to be getting these inserts fast, we're going to disrupt

those by being aggressive as well. Because if we can't time it up, that means you can't time it up either. And now we just have a bunch of chaos at the line of scrimmage, which typically is going to be a win for the defense.

And you talked about that chaos at the line of scrimmage. So here's some numbers that kind of back that up. When you look at the average width of a formation on offense in 2026, It's just 21.7 yards. Now, that used to be back in 2016.

This is just an example. 2016, it was 28.1 yards. That means, okay, where are the furthest....

Or widest offensive player. So an entire seven plus yards inside where things sort of used to be, that shows that things aren't as spread out.

They're getting more condensed, and the.

Rise in 12 personnel, more heavy personnel, more tight ends on the field, that also echoes that. So what have defenses done early on this season to combat that? You talked about blitzing, we'll talk about run blitzing and pass blitzing a little bit more in a second, but Even those insert blitz that you mentioned, those little cheat code things that the offense can feel like they can do, well, you get to neutralize that if you stack the line of scrimmage. Flores is the most famous example of this, but it's not just the Minnesota Vikings. Teams around the NFL are stacking the line of scrimmage and they're sending their guys. When you look at the five-man front percentage this year, it is 34%. Last year, it was 30.1%. 4%

of a jump is a massive jump in that category, and it has never been above 31%. Really, 30.6% is the highest that it was in 2022 since 2018. This year, we are seeing more five-man fronts than we have seen over the last eight years. So whatever you're trying to run with heavy personnel, whether you're getting an extra offensive lineman on the field, in the form of an extra tight end, whether you have these fullbacks or these insert blocks, whatever, the defense is already ready. They already have their game plan.

So it's, it's, it's a new look philosophy. I think for defenses to, like you mentioned at the top of the show, match aggression and creativity with, with aggression. Well, maybe this isn't creativity. Maybe it's just out-aggressing the creativity. Honestly, what it feels like from defense is because the blitz rate is up, not just overall, but on early downs as well. When we think of blitzes, we're thinking of, oh, okay, you know, those obvious passing situations where they get a little bit more trigger happy to send an extra guy.

It's early down stuff too. It's rumbless.

It's first and second down. So You're able to do that when you're crowding that line of scrimmage a little bit more. So coming off of the peak spread offense era, when you started to see teams trickle in, getting more and more condensed, like we saw the Rams do this a little bit more. They went from this outside zone rushing scheme to, okay, now they're a power rushing team.

We're seeing teams that are adding more tight ends on the field, not just wide receivers. So they were trying to combat the fact that defenses were spread out to match their spread, and they were trying to get ahead of the curve. Now defenses are basically saying, wait a second. if you're just going to go condensed, we're going to go condensed. And then we don't have to guess anymore.

If you're like, we, we just get to attack the line of scrimmage. There's no, Ooh, we're going to try to deceive that this guy's going to blitz you or not.

He's already there.

There are players already on the line of scrimmage. So it's a long way of saying that the more condensed offenses have been going over the last couple of years to say, Hmm, now we've got the advantage over all these spread defenses this year. For the first time since certainly 2018, they are more willing to stack the line of scrimmage to match the condensed sets and actually have an advantage with how aggressive they can get with more blitzes.

Yeah, Theo Ashe made a great point this week, friend of the show, Theo Ashe, and he was talking about this Bears-Vikings matchup and how Ben Johnson, in terms of his success rate in the past game as a play caller, on plays with motion, is way lower against Flores than anybody else. Because a lot of the times when you're using motion, right, it's a formation indicator, or rather a defensive structure indicator. Are we getting man? Are we getting zone?

Vikings are in zone anyway. So you send a receiver across the formation, it's like, oh, it's zone. Congrats, buddy.

You knew that.

We were doing that. Anyway, you know what we're doing. There's no deception here. The deception is just which one of these Eight guys in the line of scrimmage are we bringing? That's the part that you don't know and you can't know. Short of having the greatest hard count in football history, you're not going to know who's coming and who's not. And so I think when you're looking at the league-wide early down blitz rate trend, they're at 31.7%.

That's early down blitzes, highest since at least 2018. And the fact that so many teams are just playing zone with those pressures and not really caring if you know that they're in zones, it's almost like simplicity through aggression, right? And it's, you know what we're doing. We know that you know what we're doing. The question is, is your offensive line in sync enough to pick up whichever of these five or six guys that we're sending? Typically the answer is going to be no, especially in September when nobody has reps.

So again, offenses becoming more condensed. I think that they did that to believe that they were getting ahead of the cycle, right?

Because football is a cyclical thing.

But I actually believe that even though there was a short period of time, like a year, two years, whatever it was, where they did have sort of this advantage over the last couple of years, now that defenses are adjusting, now that we are seeing five-man fronts at a higher rate than ever, and it's the only time that we've seen a higher six-man front rate is last year, so we know that that aggression is there from them as well.

you are allowing defenses to stack that line of scrimmage and just.

Go after you all the time.

And I just feel as though in this cycle of football of, okay, it was really spread out and now it's more condensed, I think defenses are going to have more of the advantage because of how much they can run these multi-man fronts that are beyond four players on the line of scrimmage.

I like this kind of party.

I like this kind of party, baby.

All right! It's so funny because before everything was spread out, it was condensed and it was 12 personnel, right? Like you remember that 2010 tight end draft, like Gronk, Jimmy Graham. Everybody was running 12 personnel because the Patriots were really good at it and they were tearing people apart. Like that 2011 Patriots offense was one of the best in modern NFL history. And it was a bunch of tight ends and slot receivers. So you had a bunch of teams around the league that were taking tight ends early.

Like Kobe Fleener made a lot of money in the draft because of that trend of everybody just wanting two tight ends that played specific roles. You had your wide tight end, you had your move tight end. Everybody wanted a Wes Welker, eventually Julian Edelman. Like everybody was trying to match those archetypes.

Real ball knowers remember the Kobe Fleener-Dwayne Allen 1-2 combination for the Indianapolis Colts. You just needed to shout that out because you shouted out Kobe Fleener.

And real ball knowers know the intense debates between Kobe Fleener and Stephen Hill for which player to draft in the first round that year. Everybody had an opinion. Deep pull, deep pull. But you saw everybody try to mimic that. But if you don't have Rob Gronkowski or Jimmy Graham or Greg Olson, it's not going to work.

It takes a unicorn.

Type of tight end to do that. And so eventually, a few years later, after defenses were responding to that and also playing really condensed, that was the Legion of Boom cover three era, which ironically teams run more cover three now than even back then. They just do it a different way. That's a topic for another show. A few years later, after like the Marcus Mariota, Oregon revolution happened, you have Mariota coming in, you have Jared Goff coming in.

He ran the air raid in college. Eventually you had, you know, Patrick Mahomes coming in who ran the air raid in college, all of these air raid, Lincoln Riley, Cliff Kingsbury quarterbacks that we talked about in the season preview, they all came to the league. Everything spread out. Defenses eventually found their answer. Now everything's condensing. It's a 15 year cycle of just going up and down and up and down. tight ends.

Yes.

Tight ends. No spread. Yes. Spread.

No.

Like we're just doing the same thing again that we did in like 2012.

And this is sort of how football has always been right from the beginning. It's about offensive and defensive coordinators trying to find the advantage. And so for as long as football has existed, it's always been a little bit more of something, right?

Okay.

Like here's the cycle of football is more of a power game between the tackles. I'm not trying to say that it's not, it obviously all starts up front, no matter what, but You get more emphasis on sort of what's happening around the trenches and everything, so everything's very condensed.

It's this power.

Profile and everything. And then offenses, trying to push the envelope a little bit further out, further out, further out.

And obviously in the 20... what was it, 2017, 2018, 2019 kind of era where we just see offenses more spread out than ever. You're putting more wide receivers, more speed.

On the field.

Now we're having this next evolution of what the cycle is, but it also sort of depends on the types of players that are existing because the types of players and athleticism and size and skill sets, those things have also evolved as the game cycles through. And I just, I kind of feel as though In today's football, with defensive players built the way that they are, with the skill sets that they have, inviting them and in some ways allowing them to play those five-man fronts at a higher rate than ever, I just don't know if even some of these innovative, condensed sets are going to combat what defenses are going to be able to do.

So, look, it's only two weeks. We're only two weeks into the season, but.

I feel as though this trend could be one of the defining trends of the entire season with how much defenses believe they can stack the line of scrimmage and just be aggressive given how condensed offenses want to be.

We do want to talk about.

Some of these marquee matchups that we have in week three. The first one that I want to talk about is Rams and Broncos, and there's a lot of interest in this one, but It's a good first game to preview because it also ties in a little bit to what we were just talking about. Pairing certain coverages with how aggressive you want to be. So look, both of these teams have the ability to suffocate you on defense, but in a little bit of different ways. Brett, when you think about this game, where do you want to start sort of with our preview here?

Both teams played a lot more man coverage in week two, especially the Rams, right? They were up 44.1% man rate in week two. They were 16.7% in week one. We criticized them for bringing in two corners that can play man and not playing man. And obviously they weren't listening to us, but I think they saw the same thing we did.

No, they subscribed to the show. Yeah, I've looked it up.

Chris Shula, he has smashed those notification buttons.

No, I don't know if that's true or not. Please nobody write that. But they did run a lot more man in week two.

And it worked, by the way. Like, they were excellent. And while it is unfortunate, well, not beyond unfortunate, it's awful that Jackson Dart got hurt in the last game. This defense was playing so well on the back end. I still think it would have been tough for Giants receivers to get open, quite frankly. And also just the way that they paired that man coverage with pressure. 66.7% of all their man coverage reps in this game were about two thirds of it was paired with five plus pass rushers going with the quarterback.

Aggression and aggression. That's exactly what that is.

You're playing tight coverage and you're hoping that you get home because you're just firing guys to the line scrimmage.

And when you have Aaron Donald and Byron Young and Kobe Turner, like, yeah, you're going to get home because everybody has a one-on-one and the windows are tight because you got McDuffie back there, Quinton Lake back there. This was the game plan that I feel like the Rams remembered. They have a lot of talent, so they should just let their talent be good, and they didn't do that in week one. It was a lot of zone, a lot of four-man rushes. It kind of felt like, oh, we have Myles Garrett, we'll win with four. It's like, well, Myles' knee isn't right, so you kind of can't get away with that, and they didn't have Aaron Donald on the field yet, obviously. And so they played very passively in week one, and meanwhile, the Niners were playing super aggressive

on offense, and that aggression steamrolled them. They really course-corrected quickly of, okay, we're just going to be as aggressive as possible because we have guys and you don't. and we're the Rams and you're not. And it worked. They don't need to be worried about me. They don't need to worry about me at all.

And it's interesting going up against Nick specifically, because in 2025, Nick's had a 0.17 EPA per dropback against man coverage. That was the seventh most amongst qualifying quarterbacks. So he was a top 10 quarterback in the NFL. But when you look at the last two weeks now, one year of a sample size is a I would say a much more stable sample size than two weeks, but it's worth monitoring.

Through two weeks this season.

Negative 0.68 EPA per dropback for Knicks, which is the second fewest in the NFL. I believe Aaron Rodgers is the only quarterback who has a lower EPA per dropback.

By the way, if you're in Aaron Rodgers' territory, that's not good this year. That's not good. And you know what?

Normally, that would be quite the compliment to be in Aaron Rodgers' area, but over the last couple of seasons, not quite the case, especially to start 2026.

So I wonder what's going to mean more here.

Is it going to be the Rams and how talented they are with how they run man coverage? Is it going to be how well Nick's played against man coverage in 2025? Or is it going to be a little bit more of, hey, it seems to be something that he is struggling with this year. And does it have to do with the fact that it is man coverage paired with pressure? The Broncos have already sort of tried to mitigate for that pressure. A lot of guys around the line of scrimmage, a lot of KS around the line of scrimmage because the design rollout rate for Bo Nix went from 6% in week one to 19.4% in week two. That was the third highest among starters last week.

And overall this season, Nix has a 0.74 EPA per dropback, which is the second most this season on those design rollouts. So that's one way to sort of counter Nix. Hey, we've got a lot of chaos. It's crowding the line of scrimmage, but I'm just very curious to see how this plays out because a lot of times it's like, all right, week one, all sorts of stuff is going on.

Week two, sometimes it's continuing what we saw in week one. Sometimes it's totally different. Week three, we start to get into, okay, are these struggles real? Is this success real? Do we really start to see things moving forward? So how often are the Rams going to continue to play man coverage? Is Nick's going to be good against it? And how much are they going to try to get him away from the pocket as maybe a way to mitigate.

A a lot of that chaos and clutter that might be up at the line of scrimmage.

Yeah, if you don't think you can keep him clean in the pocket, move the pocket.

Right, exactly.

Football 101, right?

Exactly.

So I am fascinated to see if they dial that up even more this week. And if they really kind of go back to the Broncos' roots of wide zone, wide zone, wide zone, boot, wide zone, wide zone, wide zone, boot. Let's see if it works, right? Especially if you're getting that much man coverage. Well, those crossing routes off boot, They tend to do well against man coverage, especially when you have Jalen Waddell or Cortland Sutton. I think that could be a worthy game plan for them. I kind of want to flip it over to the other side of things. Got a marquee matchup. Devontae coming off a remarkable game.

Yes.

Especially for a receiver his age. One of the best.

Vintage Devontae Adams game.

That was 2019-2020 Devontae right there. Honestly, he doesn't look like he's slowed down. not that he was ever like a true speedster back then anyway but it feels like he just he hasn't lost what steps he did have even back then his skill set just ages so gracefully in the sense that he's a he's a great technician catches everything And when you have the Giants blowing cover three, you can score off that as well. Or when you have safety stepping in the bucket and you give him a little nod and go, he can still get it done.

Hard part is going up against Pat Sertan, who he has faced a lot throughout his career, having spent time in the AFC West. Sertan has the third most matchups against him. And in particular, during their career matchups, He's matched up with Devontae Adams on 70 of 132 routes. That is 53%. So they will give him shadow duty against Devontae because as much as we like Riley Moss, if you're paying Pastor 10 that much money, you're going to put him on Devontae Adams. We're going to get our money's worth on that.

I don't think that doesn't happen around the league as much as people think that it does. Like true shadow, like the old Darrell Revis style of– We're going to build our defense around one guy taking away one guy. It just doesn't happen very much in the league anymore. So for Sertan to have that sort of a rate, man, that just shows you the faith and trust that they have in his talent.

That's really impressive.

And they still target him. At least the Raiders still targeted Devontae a lot against Sertan. He had 22 targets against Sertan on those routes. Nobody else in the league has more than 12 career targets against Sertan. He has 13 receptions versus Sertan. DK is the only other one with more than six. He has nine. Adams has gained 172 yards against Sertan. DJ Moore is the only other one with more than 100 over the life of his career, right?

And he is the only player in the entire NFL to score twice on Patrick Sertan. Nobody else has done it more than once. So not that he's like the Sertan kryptonite, because even those numbers aren't gaudy across four games, but he's the one that gets like success at all. which I would say is something to watch in this game.

So what you're saying here, Brett, is may the most aggressive team win.

Essentially, yeah. Devontae brings it in over the shoulder.

For our next game, let's talk about Ravens and Cowboys. Two teams that are one-on-one, two teams that have championship game aspirations in both of their conferences. Brett, where do you want to start with this one? Because the Ravens looked unstoppable in week one, let down in week two. The Cowboys had a letdown in week one, looked unstoppable in week two, especially with how they ended the game there.

And Dak Prescott will have thrown more touchdown passes than any Cowboys quarterback in a career ever.

Where do you want to start with this preview?

I kind of want to start with, you know, the Zay Flowers of it all. This team with and without Zay Flowers, again, two-week sample size. I understand we're not going to get too crazy with it, but just watching the game, like Even setting the data aside, which we do have the data, just watching the game, it's a different offense without Zay Flowers.

Dude, I'm with you 100%.

When you look at the, again, small sample size, it's one week and one week. But when you look at the on-off splits with Zay Flowers when he was out there in week one versus when he was not in week two, even when he was not out there in week one, the yards per attempt averages overall for the offense, it goes from 18.0 to 8.2.

Insane.

The success rate drops from 63.6 to 55.2, but then this is, to me, the most important one. The explosive play rate overall on the offense, it went from 54.5% in week one to 17.2% in week two. Again, small sample sizes, but to me, the big issue here and the thing worth talking about, is not necessarily, oh, Zay Flowers is a good player.

Who knew?

We knew that already. The issue is the Ravens depth chart with and without him. Because when you look at their receivers, they have Rashad Bateman. They have Elijah Surratt. They did have Jacoby Lane before his injury. They elevated veteran Chris Moore. Okay, they've got Devontae Walker. Who's the Zay Flowers replacement?

They don't have one.

There's not.

They have LeJonte Wester who can sort of give you that same skill set. But that's what I'm saying. There's nobody to get those targets. So for some great receivers that may get hurt for a short period of time or go out of the game or whatever, you have somebody else who at least gives you that prototype. of wide receiver that you can put in the game and say, we can still run our offense. Now, is this going to be as good as when we had our top guy in there? No, but we can still fundamentally run what we want to run schematically and from an emphasis of how we want to put pressure on the defense.

Without Zay Flowers, the entire passing attack changes. They got Mark Andrews a lot more involved. Obviously, they're leaning more heavily into Rashad Bateman, but we knew that that was going to happen. But then it's like, okay, who's next? And even fundamentally getting Mark Andrews more involved with him a little bit long in the tooth here as a veteran tight end. I mean, he's not the same Mark Andrews that he was a.

Couple of years ago.

So the pivot to a totally different offense that is not only less explosive because you don't have as talented of a player out there, but also because you don't have that replacement skill set, that worries me about the Baltimore Ravens. Now, as of us doing this show, it looks like that Zay Flowers is going to.

Be back out there.

But this is something to monitor as things go on here in a long NFL season, is are the Ravens, are they just completely derailed on offense, even with Lamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, if they don't have Zay Flowers out there? It's worth sort of monitoring, I think, as this year goes on.

The splits that you're talking about, I think, just just kind of highlight how much of a knife's edge a lot of these teams are on, because not a whole lot of teams have two Zay Flowers, let alone one Zay Flowers. But one of the teams that you could argue has two receivers that might be even better than Zay are the Cowboys, and so they're one of the few teams that I think could withstand that kind of injury.

The Ravens are part of the vast majority of the league where you lose your number one receiver and your offense looks very different. The Cowboys, they have two number one receivers, so they're a little bit more insulated than 95% of the rest of the league. And that's probably a good transition to talk about this Cowboys offense because goodness gracious.

Yeah, here we go.

They've had 15 drives so far this season. Keep in mind that the Raiders had 13 drives just last week alone. Cowboys have had 15 the entire year. They've scored on 10 of them. They punted once the entire game. Like they had eight possessions last week. They had 37 points. This offense is bananas. And it's largely because you can have a George Pickens game. You can have a CD lamb game, no matter what, as long as you're having a DAC game.

You're good.

Cause you have two top 15 receivers in the league that can go off at any point. And DAC is just playing out of his mind. Like this is a This is kind of a normal Dak season now, which sounds like faint praise. It's not. I'm saying that Dak, this is just what he is. When he is at his best, he is damn near unstoppable. Some of the throws that he made in the fourth quarter last week were unbelievable, like far hash hole shots to CeeDee Lamb, and CeeDee went nuclear, which I know some people were concerned of like, okay, is George taking over the number one because of the season he had last year? Nope, they just have two number ones. If you're looking at Dak and CeeDee into the boundary last week, 8 of

9 for a buck 53, 4th most in a game this season, and 2 touchdowns. If you're looking at Dak total on vertical routes in week 2, 4 of 5 for 107, 2 touchdowns, 3 total TDs this season on vertical routes, 5th most in the league, 5 throws getting over 100 yards. It's just unfathomable numbers. This offense is so deadly. when they're going vertical, because when you have a quarterback like that, and when you have receivers like that, even when the defense is playing shaky, the fact that you can still put up 37 points in eight drives, nobody else can do that. I mean, literally, right? Nobody else can do that. So, okay, if you want to play the low possession count game, that's fine. We'll beat you doing that because we're going to score more than you.

All day, brother, all day.

Love you.

Got your back. You already know it. I'm very curious to see how the Ravens continue to use Kyle Hamilton because we've got some numbers from NGS here of how Kyle Hamilton has been used so far this season. Their all-star do-it-all defensive chess piece, 4.0 yards deep from the line of scrimmage. That's the fewest in his career, which means he's been lining up more at the second level than he has even in the slot or deep at safety.

He just has 11 snaps of safety this year, which is 9.5%. That's the lowest in his career. He's got 20.7% of his snaps at the line of scrimmage, highest in his career. 36.2% snaps at linebacker, again, highest in his career. And then overall, 56.9% of his snaps in the box, once again, highest rate of his career. So it kind of goes back to how we introed the show. Our team's just really trying to crowd that line of scrimmage with chaos. Now, there's some logic to why even outside of that trend, Kyle Hamilton might be put in that spot.

This team signed Jalen Hawkins. They drafted Malachi Starks. They may think, oh, we're good at safety. Let's use Kyle Hamilton elsewhere. But I think that it leans into being more aggressive at the line of duty.

Of scrimmage.

And having that sort of agent of chaos in Kyle Hamilton... closer to the box, closer to the line of scrimmage.

You never know. Is he blitzing? Is he in man coverage?

Is he dropping?

What's he doing?

I think that that five-man front philosophy, that crowd-the-line-of-scrimmage philosophy only gets more and more daunting for quarterbacks when you have a player like Kyle Hamilton who is sitting right there. So that chess match between Dak and Kyle Hamilton this week, I'm very much looking forward to see how that plays out.

That's a turn above your left eye. Right here. Blow it.

Blow it. Let's talk about the Raiders and Saints. To give some love to the Raiders and the Saints here. Saints, we've talked about quite a bit because Tyler Shuck's been fantastic so far this season, especially under pressure and especially in the vertical passing game.

But the Raiders, also 2-0. And I feel like we haven't talked about the Raiders as much as maybe we should.

The comment section reminded us of that last week.

They do.

Hey, look, Raiders fans haven't been 2-0 in a long time and they want somebody to talk about their team.

So, Brett, how do you feel about this one? Where do you want to start with this game?

So, one of the only reasons good things the Raiders had going for them last year was they had a very good run defense. It didn't look that way because of volume stats, but if you're looking at carry to carry, you know, efficiency-wise from carry to carry, they were really good, right? Their yards before contact allowed per attempt last year, it's a mouthful, 0.9 yards. So basically, running backs were getting less than a yard before getting hit against them last year on every single carry. That was the best in the NFL. It's just when teams are running it against them, I don't know, 35 times a game because they're in the lead yeah the volume stats are going to add up this year it's still 0.9 yards before contact per

attempt they have a 34 success rate allowed against the run this year that's sixth best they are negative 19.5 epa allowed on the ground and negative 0.39 epa per carry allowed this season both best in the NFL among all run defenses. So this team can really stop the run. I know Omarion had good volume stats last week, but if you're looking at total touches Omarion Hampton had, that kind of explains why he had the numbers he did.

They were feeding him and feeding him and feeding him and added up over time, but this team makes run games inefficient. And when you have the Saints already taking on injuries on their offensive line, going against a very good Raiders run defense, I worry about their ability to to stay ahead of the sticks and at least make third downs manageable. And then you get into third and long and you got Max Crosby against a backup left tackle.

Things could go sideways pretty quick here.

And it's, it's so night and day from what it was last year, specifically the fact that I'm just watching this defense and it's, Do the Raiders have the most talented defense in the NFL?

No, I don't think that anybody's.

Going to sit here and say that the Raiders have the best defense in the NFL or even a top five defense. But are they a lot better than what they were last year?

Yes.

And that is while getting a lot of really important snaps. from rookies, from young guys, and yet Rob Leonard, their defense coordinator, and probably just, honestly, top-down, John Spitek, their general manager, Clint Kubiak, their new head coach, like, there's so much confidence in all of these guys that are playing, and you see that on TV.

Defense.

Trayden Stukes was a standout at safety for them in week one, but Hezekiah Massis, my guy, somebody who I had as a top 100 player on my big board. I thought there was no way he should have lasted until the fifth round. He is such a great early success story for the Raiders because this is what happens when you have a cohesive vision between your front office and who is doing the scouting and drafting of these players.

And what the defense wants.

Hezekiah Massis, cornerback out of Cal. What was he best at when he was at Cal? Off-coverage rolls, cover three-step, quarters. When he could sit off the line of scrimmage and really read quarterbacks and just bait those throws, sit and manage space very, very well, that's when he was at his biggest impact in college.

The Raiders?

Run zone, second most in the NFL this year.

And when I watch Hezekiah Masses, who had one of the best games of any defensive player last week, or I should say one of the most impactful games, because you go back and you watch some of the snaps and there's still a lot of rookie players. plays that are out there where okay he needs to handle this a little bit better needs to be a little bit stronger in run defense when he's taking on a block but you see him fire downfield in run defense and even though he got got on some run defense plays he also had some serious run stops and Brett I'll take you back to my scouting report that I had for him pre-draft one of the things that I noted is has to play stronger and with more fire in run defense. He had a missed tackle rate above 25

in each of the last two seasons that he played college ball. But this year, even though, again.

It's not perfect... The confidence he had.

Yeah, he's about it.

Dude, and the same thing with Trayden Stukes the week before. So you're playing this Raiders. Again, is it the best defense in the NFL?

No, but they're.

Playing with so much confidence.

That's when you get the results here. You are identifying players' strengths. You are identifying their weaknesses. You are putting them in a position to succeed with those strengths more often. And then when it comes to those weakness points, you're making sure that they're playing with as much confidence as possible.

That's what Hezekiah Massis was this past week. And it's an encapsulation, in my opinion, early on of how different this Raiders organization feels this year versus last year.

The confidence is those young guys are playing with. How do you change a place? You do something they say you can't.

You guys did something they said you can't. Set point dogs.

Great job, man.

So seeing all that, there is a non-zero chance that one of these young Raiders DBs gets their hands on the ball in this game. And that did happen to Tyler Shuck in week one. He threw two picks in the first half against Detroit. And they were both against zone coverage, by the way.

And they were both against zone coverage.

Yes, they were. Yes, that has been something that we've talked about with him, even though he was better against zone last week. It is something we're going to have to keep an eye on. But, you know, Dimitri, who's on the team with us here at NFL Pro, he happened to be a former teammate of Tyler Shuck at Texas Tech. And we were talking through it with the meeting about how how well Shuck was able to bounce back from those picks, how well he's played in these second halves of games so far. And even, you know, late last season, like he faced some early adversity, got really hot late in the year. He's tried to, you know, carry that over this season. And something Dimitri brought up is just how resilient he is, right? And how even

when he fails, he's so good at kind of just flushing it, moving on to the next play. And he has supreme confidence and he has belief in himself. And that really is a necessary skill set to have as a quarterback because there are some guys, you know, they threw two picks in the first half. You're down 21-0.

You just go completely in the tank. And you can see it just based on body language. Like, well, we didn't win this game. We'll move on to next week. Whereas, you know, Tyler Shuck is like, 21 points in the second half? Yeah, I can close that gap. And he did. And, you know, Demetri compared it to Josh Allen, which I found interesting because Shuck got fired up last week. By an opposing coach referring to him as a poor man's Josh Allen. He reminds me a little bit like a poor man's Josh Allen. Has all the arm talent in the world. Can run. I don't think he gets enough credit for how good an athlete he is. And then the entire week, everybody in the Saints building was just calling him poor man over and over and over again.

And just really getting under his skin.

You don't say the Josh Allen part. Because honestly, I thought that that quote was hilarious. Because if you're called a poor man's Josh Allen in your second year in the NFL... That's a genuine compliment. That is a genuine compliment. But by just calling him poor man all week and leaving out the Josh Allen part, that's when he's just, you know, he's the LeBron Miami.

Heat meme where he's like, all right, okay.

Can I get like an upper middle class Josh Allen? But he played really, really well. You know, I think part of it is mentality. Maybe I'll use Eli, Eli Manning as like a better example. Like anytime Eli made a mistake, I don't want to say he didn't care, but he didn't let it affect him. He was always just coming out firing and having belief. Okay, I can make this tight window throw. I'm not going to second guess myself because the second you stop shooting is the second you stop scoring and then the defense wins. And I just really respect the hell out of Tyler Shuck for having that mentality and and not letting those early picks get to him. It's very possible the Raiders get him once, maybe even twice in this game, but I

still think as long as he's there, and as long as he has all those vertical threats, the Saints are never entirely out of a game.

We've already seen that this season, that that's not the case. I mean, we saw it on the road in Baltimore on week two. What that does for morale and confidence, to know that you are never out of it, because sure, like a quarterback's mentality is really, really important, but let's face it, like everybody has to believe that you're going to come back.

Everybody on offense, everybody on defense, all of that, man.

And I just, I feel as though when the quarterback will show you what he's capable of, it just permeates with confidence throughout the entire rest of the roster. When you look at Chuck in the first half and then the second half slash overtime, we'll throw overtime in there as well. Over the last two weeks, first half, 0.29 EPA per dropback, which is the sixth fewest in the NFL.

But in the second half in overtime, plus 0.26 EPA per dropback, which is the 10th most. So when this man's back is against the wall, when they need captain clutch, when they need somebody to lead them on a comeback here, he is a top 10 quarterback in the NFL through two weeks into the season. So To me, it's such a difference maker, again, when you have a player that can instill this kind of confidence and you've seen it a couple of times from him already in his career.

That never-say-die mentality and how that goes to the rest of the team, extremely powerful stuff when you talk about a long NFL season against some really, really good teams that you're.

Going to face. Now, Saints and Raiders fans both wanted us to talk about them. Be careful what you wish for. Anytime I start praising a team, they start doing poorly. So if they lose this week, it's on you.

The Coleman curse. Hold on, though. You talked about both teams. They're going to tie.

If they tie this week, we have to intro next week's show with the Coleman curse being just an insane force of universal properties here.

If they tie in this game. We could do a super cut over the last five years of every time I praise a team and they immediately lose. So you asked for it guys.

The last thing that we want to talk about here on this episode of NFL pro is the importance of backup quarterbacks. We're talking about a lot of trends that we're seeing early on in the season, but Brett, I feel like you pointed this out or somebody on the NGS team pointed this out, how much teams have relied on backup quarterbacks already. And through two weeks of the season, We've already seen 41 quarterbacks play in the regular season.

Just for those keeping score at home, there's only 32 NFL teams, and we've already had 41 quarterbacks play through two weeks of the regular season, which I think lends itself to a bigger conversation. I'm not just like, oh man, a lot is sort of up in the air when these quarterbacks go out, but the importance of backup quarterbacks, and I think that we're seeing that early on in the season.

And especially in... backup quarterbacks that don't make you change your offense. Yes. Are they still capable of running the same plays that are your bread and butter, right? Look at Drew Locke. Drew Locke can make the throws that Sam Darnold can make. Now, I think Sam Darnold will make them with more regularity, but Drew's out there spinning it. Like, Locke-tober came early this year, I would say. Like, he's been great because you don't have to shrink the playbook.

You know, going from Caleb Williams to if he doesn't play this week, to potentially case Keenum, that's a different playbook, right? It's a different conference. Even going from Caleb to Bajent, you call it different stuff. Going from Darnold to Locke, it preserves, you know, what your offensive identity is. You know, going from Kyler to Wentz, I don't necessarily think that shrinks the playbook. Now, will Kyler execute it with more regularity? Maybe, but at least you're fundamentally still preserving the offense. The Jackson dart to Jameis... drop off I think the playbook does change a little bit especially with how mobile dart is you know I think going from Jaden to Marcus Mariota roughly the same but Jaden's obviously more dynamic.

Yeah but to your point it's the same skill set that's.

There yeah you're just not going to intentionally run exactly at this age but right which by the way 10 years later Jameis and Marcus starting games let's go We got there somehow.

Longevity, folks. The Bucks and the Titans, they knew all along.

That these guys are going to be in the league. No, but I think that you bring up a good point. And there's actually a transaction earlier this week that happened with Will Levis signing on the Jets practice squad that I think he's a perfect example of sometimes people go, well, hold on. How does somebody with all the tools in the world like Will Levis, how is he not picked up immediately just as a flyer quarterback? And I think the reason why is because The most important part about having a backup quarterback is having somebody that you trust, or at least that's how I would fundamentally view it.

In a perfect world, I'd love to have three spots for quarterbacks. One is your starting quarterback. Two is a backup that you know can give you the chance to win football games, the chance to win football games for a two to four week span, right? Like a short-term reliever type of quarterback if your starting quarterback has a high ankle sprain or something like that. And then ideally, you'd love to have a younger, higher ceiling type of quarterback that you have as sort of your QB3, whether it's on the practice squad or you've actually got it on the 53-man roster. But that middle player, that short-term reliever, is so, so important. And I think that that player often gets overlooked by some fans who just want sort

of the flashy, high-ceiling, younger quarterback. You need that guy. You need dependability to be able to come in and sort of steady the ship for you for a week or two or maybe even a month while your starting quarterback is down.

So when i go to that wedding halloween week in vermont who's my backup that you're going to bring in that you can execute the same show remember connor's connor's watching brother no pressure in the very first show that we did you brought up people, what position was it? Somebody's getting Timothy Mozgov money.

Who else is doing that? I don't, I don't, who's the replacement there? I don't know.

At that point, I'm just getting a young hotshot to come in and I'm just throwing it deep. That's what, I don't think I can find anybody that's going to be able to give me that sort of comp.

So you'd have to give me a while.

Can we get Danny Kelly on loaner for a week?

Just, just with the creative comps. Yes.

Yes. Thank you for listening to our Week 3 Preview podcast. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brett Kollmann & Trevor Sikkema’s Week 3 Preview | NFL Pro

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