NFL Pro Week 6 Sunday Reaction Show

Welcome to the NFL pros week seven reaction show. Thank you for listening on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to follow and subscribe to the show. Caleb Williams is back.

It's mid October. Halloween is in 12 days. The Browns are four and two. The Rams are two and four. What a league, Trevor. What a league. The Cardinals win it, and the Rams drop to 2-4.

Wow.

We have a lot to talk about on today's show. First things first, we had a couple star players returning to the lineup this week. Caleb's back.

A.J.

Brown's back. Fairly mixed results, I would say. Let's start off with Caleb. He started this game against Atlanta 10-for-10, over 12 yards per attempt, touchdown. damn near perfect passer rating. Ended up 30 of 36 on the game. I was a little bit worried about his mobility, right? How elusive is he going to be compared to what we're used to with Caleb Williams just getting out of sacks? And I didn't really notice a difference. He looks completely back.

Yeah, Caleb was awesome in this game. Now, it wasn't the most challenging Caleb Williams script he's ever had to go up against, certainly if we don't go back to the USC days where his defense was giving up basically 50 a game and he had to try to outscore them. But no passes in this game over 20 air yards, 3.6 air yards per attempt, which is the second fewest in a game. in his career. There's also only his third game in his NFL career without a deep pass of 20 or more air yards. Forget 20 yards down the field. 27 of his 36 attempts were below 10 air yards. So the script wasn't super difficult for Caleb today, but he looked really good, especially on those opening drives.

Like you mentioned how he started this game. He looked very confident. The zip was still there because like with lower body injuries with the quarterback, Of course, you know, mobility is the thing that comes to your mind first, but so is power. You know, when you're setting up to throw, your base is your power. And if you have any sort of lower body injury, even like a hamstring injury, and you're just a little bit light on wherever that injury is, sometimes that can affect you. fast the ball comes out of your hand how much power you could generate I didn't see any limitations at all from Caleb Williams in this game and so I think that it also went to the fact that they had 29 design carries to running backs in this game I

mean Chicago for as much as people want it to just be the Ben Johnson Caleb Williams show like they're gonna run the dang ball and it just gets a lot easier to run the ball when you have Caleb Williams your quarterback because you just never know what kind of magic that he is gonna pull out of hat as well so Great game from Caleb Williams. Love to see it. He's one of the most talented players in the league. And so it was great to see him back on the field playing really well right away.

And it's the machine-like efficiency of this offense when they have their quarterback, when they have their offensive line, when they have their run game. Like that's what's really impressive to me. He had 24 clean pockets in this game, which the Falcons pass rush was getting after it this season. He had 24 clean pockets. And he went 24 of 24 for 248 yards in this game from a clean pocket.

his 24 attempts are the most without an incompletion from a clean pocket in a game since at least 2018. Why since 2018? That's as far back as the stat goes. So as far as we're concerned, when NextGenStats is measuring your efficiency from a clean pocket, this was the best game NextGenStats has ever measured. They were in control from the start, even though technically it ended up fairly close on the scoreboard. I never really felt like the Falcons were a threat to win this game, and it's just because of how efficient this offense was.

And it's worth pointing out, who thought that this was going to be what Caleb was going to be in the NFL? Probably not a lot of people. This super efficient passer? The people who looked at who Caleb Williams was, even at his best when he was at USC, he was going to land probably somewhere on the Jameis Winston to Josh Allen spectrum of how you play the quarterback position if it was on the good end obviously it would have been a lot closer to sort of what we see from Josh Allen week in and week out which my goodness what Josh Allen was able to do this past week which I feel like we could say every single week or Jameis which I know we'll touch on the Giants a little bit later I think a lot of people thought that's the type of quarterback that

Caleb Williams is going to be this is legitimate growth This is maturation of how talented he is and how good he could be.

I think what I've seen from him today, just eliminating the catastrophic plays. He's never been a big turnover guy, but in that situation, you know the play's over. Get it out of your hands so it doesn't... Third and six is long enough. You don't want to go third and ten, third and eleven. Smart football.

To see this game one from him coming back from injury, dude, you've got to feel great about this if you're a Bears fan. Look closer than what they wanted at the end of this one, but I think overall you've got to feel good about this one.

If you're a Bears fan. And then on the other side of the coin, A.J. Brown, he doesn't look back. Like, just watching him play, let alone the stat line. The stat line wasn't great. You know, he's had a pretty high drop rate this year. But his calling card was, hey, I'm the big, strong, vertical threat that is way faster than I have any right to be at 225, 230 pounds. Like, I can still stack on a corner and get vertical, and I'm going to catch everything thrown my way. He's doing neither of those, and I think the ankle– really is slowing him down. I kind of take out week one because he got hurt early in that one. But if you're looking at his average speed on vertical routes in this game, his average speed on vertical routes was

13.87 miles per hour. If you're going back to 2025, his average speed on vertical routes was about 15.5 miles per hour. In the year before that, 15.5 miles per hour. So that's a significant decline in speed. And when your whole thing is, I'm bigger than you, I'm faster than you, I'm going to moss you anytime you throw me a 50-50 ball. If you take away one of those elements, let alone two of those elements, then it's like, all right, well, what are you then? I'm not sure right now. May taking a shot, incomplete, right through the wickets of A.J.

Brown.

You think that this is one that you see A.J. Brown make all the time.

Surprising that he can't track that football.

I think a healthy A.J. Brown obviously would be helping this offense a lot. he's not healthy right now. And so I just, you're giving a guy routes that is not nearly what we expected. And I'm, I'm not sure if he's helping more than hurting.

Yeah. I mean, when you look at his EPA per target from 2022 to 2024, which is when he was absolutely cooking with the Eagles, it was plus, 0.12. 2025, last year, it was less than half of that. It was 0.05. And then this year, it's negative 0.15. So this is the first year in a long time that A.J. Brown has a negative EPA per target on what he is doing. He is mainly a contested catch receiver. So if you're dropping the footballs that are coming anywhere close to your hand, you start really, really losing your calling card.

And unfortunately for him, it was just a terrible day. Not only were there touchdowns that he dropped in this game dude he dropped the the onside kick he's on the onside kick hands team for this exact reason for the ball to hit his hands and for him to come away with it and he just didn't so it's worth monitoring but of course like if you're a Patriots fan you still feel pretty good about it because you won this game and Drake may look great without AJ Brown looking fantastic so yeah definitely the other side of the coin from the way that we talked about Caleb Williams but uh obviously if you're a Patriots fan it's great to know that You don't quote-unquote need him to always win these games.

Totally forgot to mention this, by the way. Speaking of guys who came back for the Bears this week and played out of their mind, Kyler Gordon had eight pass rush snaps in this game. Five pressures, all of them under two and a half seconds. Three sacks, three tackles for loss, two quarterback hits, multiple force fumbles. He's the only DB in the last 40 years to have three plus sacks and multiple force fumbles in the same game.

He is tied for the most sacks in a game for any DB since they started recording the sack stat in 1982. This was an all-time pass rush performance by a defensive back, and the amount of impact plays that he was making, I mean, this... This looked like old Kyler Gordon. I didn't expect him to look like that immediately.

He didn't miss a beat.

Looking like young Rondé Barber out there with all the pass rush production from the cornerback position. No, he was awesome and utilized in exactly the right ways. It's so cool when a defensive coordinator... has the exact game plan to maximize a certain player in his skill set, and it actually comes to fruition. And that's exactly what happened with Kyler Gordon.

It was great to see. Another big play from this Bears defense as Kyler Gordon down there around the ball again. All right, Trev, let's talk about the upset of the century of the week. The Cardinals went down to SoFi. Again.

For the second time. Yeah, thank you.

Second time this year. His sixth field goal of the afternoon. The Cardinals win it. Their second win of the season, both here at SoFi. They're actually undefeated in SoFi, by the way, this season.

What if they have a better record in SoFi than at home this season? What happens then? What do we do at that point?

Their special teams EPA per play in that stadium has to be absurd. Because they had six field goals in this game. They had a blocked punt against the charge. For whatever reason, when this special teams unit gets into the hallowed grounds of SoFi Stadium, they play out of their gourd this was an unbelievable game by the cardinals terrible game by the rams for a bunch of reasons i think some coaching decisions which we get into were pretty bad i think the offense played poorly I think the defense held on as long as they could, but six field goals, they couldn't keep them out of field goal range. Just a complete collapse by the Rams, but I do want to give credit to the Cardinals. What a game by Arizona and brand new coach, Mike LaFleur.

Yeah, and you know who else I want to give credit to? Their linebacker, Mack Wilson Sr.

You know why?

Because over the summer, when Miles Garrett was traded to the Rams, he was quoted saying, How do you feel about Miles Jr.

They got to deal with us.

At the end of the day, they got to deal with us.

The quote tweets that flew off that bad boy for a statement like that. And here we are, the Cardinals end up defeating the Los Angeles Rams in their house. It's a shout out to the Cardinals. And I think a team where the record was one of the lower records in the league, obviously. And I think there were a lot of people that thought that the Arizona Cardinals were going to be a team that was going to be in very close contention for the number one overall pick.

And who knows how this season is going to go. Maybe it ends up that way. But I always felt that, especially looking at this offense, how it was going to give them a chance every single week. Now, funny enough, this wasn't the game where the offense scored 30, 33, 37, whatever the point total was. It was lower, and it was actually the defense that showed up here. And so I want to make sure that we're giving the Cardinals credit here first. But at the same time, this is a major stumbling now for the Rams. This is not jet lag off the Australia game. This is not, oh, we had a couple of guys hurt. Oh, Pukunuku wasn't in the lineup and things like that. This is now you're running out of excuses type of thing. And I

think that you kind of feel that everywhere with this team. And sure, they don't have Myles Garrett yet. But there's no way that I'm going to let anybody get away with the statement, yeah, but the Rams don't have Myles Garrett yet.

Shut up.

It's the Rams this was this was absolutely a right there roster with the Seattle Seahawks and whoever wins that game in the playoffs probably ends up winning the Super Bowl so yeah Miles Garrett was supposed to take them over the top but Brett I'm gonna repeat something that I've talked about for multiple weeks now on this podcast that it just looks so difficult for the Rams. Every single week, it looks so difficult. I mentioned, I can't remember if it was last week or the week before, that the Rams had the lowest average separation with their wide receivers of any team in the NFL last year, of any team in the NFL this year, and both of those averages were right around 3.0 and 3.1 average of separation for their wide receivers. Brett, guess what it

was this game?

2.9.

It was less. Everything looks so difficult. This entire offense to me is Puka, please save us. Now, something else that I think is definitely worth noting here is Matthew Stafford, last year he had both good and bad under pressure. Brett, this year it's only the bad. We don't even have the good. Now Stafford goes down, lost the football. You saw the Cardinals, 41.7% blitz rate this week against the Rams.

If you look at their weeks one through five, their blitz rate was 25.2. So you go from 25.2 to 41.7. Why are you doing that? Because Stafford has not been able to handle the blitz this year because their only get out of jail card is Puka Nakua. If you pressure Matthew Stafford, and if you have a game plan to get close coverage or even like cap coverage on Puka Nakua, What more are they? What answers do they have for you? And I think that that's where a lot of the frustration comes from for a team that you hear McVay talk in the post-game press conference about the self-inflicted turnovers or penalties or special teams or whatever it is. Obviously, no coach wants to see that, but I think certainly we didn't think the Rams' margin for

error was this thin, where if you have a couple of those, that's it.

All of a sudden, you're.

Losing football games when maybe you shouldn't.

To me, this is like when a pitcher that throws 104 has no ability to locate the ball. And if you have that much gas but you can't locate it, what else do you have? If you're looking at the Rams fastball offensively, it was their ability to throw out heavier personnel groupings. That's what they did all last year.

It's what they're trying to do a lot this year. And specifically today, it did not work. If you're looking at 12 and 13 personnel groupings, they passed out of that grouping 56% of the time. That's a lot. Even last year, where they were one of the top teams in terms of passing out of heavier personnel groupings, they did it 40% of the time last year. 56% is insanity.

And they were doing that because the Cardinals were matching base into these heavier personnel groupings 84% of the time. They weren't playing nickel into it. They were playing base into it. And so the Rams were like, good, that's what we want. We're going to throw on your linebackers and safeties. And the Cardinals still stopped it anyway. That was the remarkable thing. If you're looking at matching base against these heavier personnel groupings, they allowed 3.9 yards per play.

That is awful. And I think if you're looking at how, you know, the downstream effect of that, okay, we don't get our fastball because we're not throwing the ball well out of heavier personnel groupings. We had a 42.9% success rate today. Last year, It was 56.6%. That is a massive decrease in terms of success rate from big boy personnel groupings. So we're not doing that well, which means we're in, you know, second and forever, third and forever.

And now we're going into 11 personnel grouping. Our receivers aren't separating like we want to, not to mention the Cardinals due to injury at safety. Their nickel personnel grouping was four corners. So nobody can separate because we're not running routes against safeties. We're running routes against corners. Garrett Williams was playing free safety for this team, and he's a corner. Yes, yeah. So it was just this confluence of events that weirdly made the Cardinals the perfect matchup defensively against this Rams offense. And I think the most crucial play that nobody is talking about, this was a tackle for loss on a second and short that swung the win probability by 9%. in favor of the Cardinals

in this game, which is unbelievable that a TFL has that kind of effect on win probability, but it was that good. So I'm going to walk you through this. Fourth quarter, 437 left in the game. Rams are driving. They're in Arizona territory. It's a very tight game. They're down by six, but okay. So it's second and short.

We have four corners on the field, again, for nickel for Arizona. Budda is the only safety. He's kind of creeping towards this line of scrimmage, and as soon as he sees Puka Nakua motion into the backfield and do the normal Puka thing where he's looking like he's going to be an insert blocker Buda Baker just triggers because he knows it's probably going to be a man blocking scheme with Puka as the insert which means there's going to be double teams firing off the ball so if he times it well he can sneak in between these double teams get in the backfield get a TFL and then set up an even longer third down and that's exactly what happens so He gets a two-yard TFL on this because he's Buda Baker and he's great at playing

the run from depth as the only safety that's even on the field. That sets up a third and five, which is a two-yard catch by Puka. And then you get a penalty. And then it's fourth and eight. Right? And they call a screen for some reason on fourth and eight. Sean, come on. Come on, man. And then after that, the Cardinals are in control. There's three minutes left in the game. They have a six-point lead. So that...

you know, the Rams ended up scoring, then the Cardinals went down and kicked another field goal. But the fact that they were able to stop that drive then and there bled enough time off the clock where it limited the total number of possessions left in the game and set the Cardinals up to be the last ones with the ball. That's, that's a Buda Baker game winner right there, game winning TFL, so to speak. So just a, a remarkable day by this Cardinals defense. They, they held up in base, they held up in nickel, which like, Just unreal.

Absolutely unreal by them. Great day by Rallis. Great day by Buda. Great day by everybody. I can't praise them enough for this. The defense of the Cardinals was incredible. They're the story of the day.

Wow.

Let's move on.

Let's talk about the London game. Let's talk about your Houston Texans getting the dub against Jacksonville. Funny, Jacksonville playing in London two weeks in a row. And for the second week, it comes down to.

A buzzer beater field goal.

You know, last week, obviously, they were on the great end of a Cam Little buzzer beater field goal. And then this week, they were not.

On the fun end of it.

But if you're a Houston Texans fan, man, you got to feel alive right now, not just because of that game, but because you are quite literally still alive in that division. You hold all the cards now at this point where, Brad, I don't know if you've seen the next five games for the Houston Texans, but it's pretty favorable because they're sitting here at 2-4. 2-4, yeah. They play the Giants next week. Then they have a bye, and that it is at the Chargers, at the Browns, versus the Colts.

Winnable games all around. And you hold a game now on Jacksonville when it comes to that tiebreaker, if it gets to that point at the end of the season. And the next Texans-Jacksonville game is in Houston. So they get to host in the next one. So you feel pretty good if you're a Texans fan. But what's the big takeaway for you here in this game? You want to talk Texans? You want to talk Jags here?

I think we could talk a little bit of both. I mean, this was a great football game. It was extremely entertaining. I'm West Coast, so it was 6.30 a.m. So I got my morning coffee, got my coffee cake and my eggs and, you know, watching the Texans and specifically C.J. Stroud play out of his mind. I thought this was such a fun back and forth. You had really good quarterback play on both sides. I think Stroud was on another level, but Trevor still had plenty of great throws throughout this game. He was really aggressive. He was working the intermediate middle of the field, and he kind of had to to go toe-to-toe with Stroud, who was just unbelievable as far as his efficiency. His EPA per dropback was plus. 31, and that's really just because

of the end zone interception by Travis Hunter, but that was his second best EPA per dropback this season. His completion percentage over expected was plus 12.8%, fourth highest of his career. He was absolutely incredible, over 10 yards, 7 of 10 for 164, a touchdown and that pick, plus 26.7% completion percentage over expected on throws over 10 yards. He was spectacular against the Blitz. That to me was so validating, relieving, a combination of those two things because we knew it was still in there from his rookie year. He kind of wandered through the wilderness in 2025, but we knew these kinds of throws were still in there. And to see them happen week after week after week, especially in a big spot, have to win this game. Like, cannot

lay an egg in this game. Have to be your best. And he was his best. To me, as a Texans fan, like, I just felt such a sigh of relief of, oh, thank God.

We have a quarterback.

He's for real. He's still for real. He's still that guy. Like, we needed him to play his best, and he did it. Thank God we have one of those kind of quarterbacks. So I felt immense gratitude. that we have a future still. But even then, Jags fans, I know they're pissed about how this game ended, but I wouldn't feel any less confident about my ability to win the AFC South if I was Jags fans either. It's just one of those, ah, tip your cap, CJ played out of his mind. But I don't think the Jags played poorly in this by any stretch.

No, I don't either. And really quick, just going back to the CJ Stroud thing, it's been very frustrating for Texas fans, there's no doubt about it, because Stroud's been unbelievable and the defense has been... Less than stellar, I think is a way to put it kindly. And the defense was supposed to be the part of the team that carried you. But if I think if you sat down and asked every Texans fan, which one would you rather have to start a struggling season, knowing there's a chance that it all kind of turns around for you in the second half of the season? Would you rather have your defense be elite and Stroud still be bad?

Or would you rather have Stroud kind of looking elite and the defense is a lot worse than you thought it was going to be? I think everybody would understandably pick the Stroud part of that. You want Stroud to be the one to look good, especially because defense is often a rollercoaster ride up and down. Even if you have the same players year to year, it's never the same.

So there is a much easier path to redemption for the defense to turn around in the second half of the season when you know that C.J. Stroud is playing the way that he is. So I think that, again, as frustrating as it is, I think everybody would take the way that it has played out. If it's got to be frustrating, this is the way that you would want for it to be. If you're Jacksonville now, let's go to Jacksonville really quick. I think that the frustrating part is you weren't really able to generate a lot of pressure on the pocket the way that you thought you would have been able to against what has been a struggling Houston offensive line. Now, Houston's offensive line has struggled more as run blockers than they have pass protectors,

but still, you would like to see your defensive line for Jacksonville, especially Trayvon Walker, Josh Hines-Allen, be able to generate a lot more pressures than they did in this game. All that to say, I do think that you're correct where you watch Jacksonville play and you go, this is still a really good football team. And the thing that really stands out to me is Travis Hunter. and everything that was Travis Hunter in this game, because, you know, going into this season, I think it was fair, and we heard a lot of these conversations of, hey, you know, was the trade worth it? What do you think about this player? And I think a lot of us were forced to answer and ask the question, if Travis Hunter

is only a corner, how do you feel about the trade, right? I think that we even talked about that here on this show. Boy, does it feel good to no longer have to think that way after watching him over the last couple of weeks, because He plays the most offensive snaps as a Jag this season. He has an interception on defense. He has a touchdown on offense. But Brett, it's more than that. It's how he looks. It's the eye test. It's watching him. It is the confidence in which he is playing whenever he steps on the field, whether it is on offense or on defense. He is, I mean, dude, the interception in the end zone The speed at which he recovers when the receiver breaks on his route to the opposite direction was unbelievable. He was

playing at the speed versus the rest of the players, like how fast he was running versus everybody else on the field. It looked like the Colorado tape. And it's so rare that you get a player who... is able to make it look easy in college and then also at times can make it look easy in the NFL. And then when you watch him on offense, brother, he ran a Texas route. I mean, Liam Cohen is absolutely diabolical for that touchdown to Travis Hunter. He's running a Texas route. He puts Travis Hunter in the backfield. Forget about receiver. Forget about him moonlighting as a wide receiver.

They made him his offensive weapon. He's moonlighting as an offensive weapon. They put him in the backfield. They took a look at the poor linebacker on the other side of the Lions' scrimmage and said, I'm sorry it had to be you, buddy. And they send Travis Hunter in motion on a Texas route that no linebacker outside of maybe Fred Warner himself would have a chance in hell at stopping. And it's just, that's the beauty of Travis Hunter.

And I love that we don't have to ask these questions anymore that are Well, if he's just a corner, how valuable is he? Because now we get to continue the conversation of my goodness, how valuable is this player and how good can he be? Where is the ceiling? Because the ceiling, it looks so incredibly high after what we've seen from him over the last couple of weeks.

He's bulked up a lot since last season. Like you could just see it on him. He is huge compared to college Travis Hunter and rookie Travis Hunter. And you could tell The Jags were like, hey, man, put on some body armor. We're going to be using you this season. And they followed through on that promise. He is bigger.

He is stronger. Didn't lose a step as far as explosiveness. When's the last time you saw somebody put on that much muscle and still be as fast as they were?

Especially corners. Especially corners. It almost never happens that way.

There he is at the goal line for the touchdown!

And I think that game is a good transition to our next segment that we have here on the show, which is simply called, what are we doing? The first topic of what are we doing is about Liam Cohen, who I praise constantly for his offensive creativity, how aggressive he is as a coach, how much faith he puts in his players to really put the ball in their hand to go win the game. I think he believed he was doing that in this situation here at the end of the game, but it wasn't the correct decision to make. It's fourth and four. Houston's 42-yard line, okay?

The Jags are down three. And you have Cam Little, who it is a positive thing having Cam Little on your team. I want to be very clear that I say that. But I think that having a kicker as good as Cam Little, who can blast a field goal from up to.

70 yards, right?

So maybe even beyond 70 yards, honestly. It's a great thing to have, but I think in this case, it swayed Liam Cohen in the wrong direction. Because they opt to kick a field goal well within Cam Little's range. And Brett, all they did was simply tie the game 31-31, giving the ball back to Houston. What was it? A minute 49 seconds left was when they hiked the ball for the first time. And Houston had all three timeouts and all they had to do, the game was tied.

All you were doing was tying the game. You weren't even going up three. You were just tying the game. All Houston had to do was get into field goal range and that was it. And guess what? They got into field goal range.

It was over.

You have to choose the path where you control your destiny more than that. Offenses are too good.

C.J.

Stroud in this very game was too good. Your defensive line was not getting home at all this game. And I think that this was a unique fault where having a kicker as good as Little may have gotten in Cohen's head a little bit to just think about how easy it would be to tie this game for him to make that field goal. And obviously he made it.

But then we saw the consequences that followed. When you do not control your own destiny in the last two minutes, the last minute, whatever it is, it is often not the right decision. And in this case, it obviously was not the right decision because Jacksonville got exactly what they wanted out of that decision to kick the field goal.

They made the field goal. And it didn't matter at all, and they still lost this game.

And to me, it was an indefensible decision, which, keep in mind, you know, next-gen stats had it as like a plus 10%. 14.6 percent go yeah this is one of the largest decisions of the year as far as going against the model and i think it's to your points because you had cam little it's like 60 yard field goal i have cam little it's like it's not about whether or not your kicker cans, but whether or not you should. Right. And he should not have, because up until this point, remember the Texans had scored 31 points on this defense. You couldn't get a stop all day.

CJ is playing out of his mind. You know, you're going to have to go through CJ Stroud on third down. And you know how many incompletions CJ Stroud had on third down? in this game? None. He was 7 of 7. I have no confidence in this defense to stop CJ with the way he was playing. So why even risk it? I think you have a much better chance of my highly paid first overall pick quarterback with my genius offensive coach and my myriad of weapons. I have a much better chance of converting a 4th and 4, taking way more clock kicking a field goal and at least getting to overtime, or maybe we just score a touchdown and the game's over. That to me was just an indefensible decision.

And it's the third week in a row now that I have had gripes of varying degrees with how Liam Cohen has managed fourth quarters. It happened in the Bengals game. It happened last week. It happened this week. He's a great coach. That is the one area that still needs to improve.

Yeah. And, and It feels as though there's a lot more of these than there should be. There's a lot of coaching staffs, if not all of them, in the NFL that have analytics coaches. Now, I don't know how close they are on the sideline. I don't know if they're right next to where the head coach is. I don't know how much they're leaning on them. But there are a lot more of these decisions that I just did not think that we would see this season, that we're seeing this season from head coaches.

And there's even stuff that doesn't require a coach to be in your ear. It should just be common sense. Like, Hey, If the Bucs are trying to set up a field goal with a running clock, don't call timeout Mike McCarthy and let them swap to the K-ball. That's just common sense.

Even beyond the kicker ball, which the commentators did a good job of pointing out, that if the Steelers would not have called the timeout there, not only would the Buccaneers have had to have Sort of tried to collect themselves to then make the field goal as the clock was winding down and the clock was running. They also would have had to kick it with the game ball, not the specialized K balls that they get to sort of prep the kickers for that makes it. I'll say easier.

I feel like the word's doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's little things that you can do to the ball that help out the kicker. It's not like it makes him automatic from 70 or something every single time.

But it helps.

And again, we're talking about decisions that are giving you the advantage in the slimmest of margins. And I just felt that was another example there. I was so surprised that McCarthy bailed the Bucs out in two different instances by calling.

That one timeout. I can't tell you how many times I looked at the TV and said, what are we doing this week? Right. Kellen Moore pulling the starters for 10 minutes to go and then having to put him back on the field because they fumbled immediately.

Right.

You have you have Harbaugh in the postgame press. I'd be like, oh, we we didn't we weren't trying to bench Skadabo. It's like what you accidentally gave him no carries in the game. Do you think we're stupid?

Scataboo even said after the game, Scataboo's like, yeah, I was being punished. Like he used that word. He's like, I was punished this week for what I did the previous week. Scataboo said it. He gets it. I don't know. Obviously, head coaches have a very difficult job because you're not only like a, You're not only a coach, you're also a CEO of the team. You're also a people manager for these players. And you're also a politician to the media. Like, there's a lot of things that you have to be as a head coach. But, like, come on, man. You could just say it. No, just you can lie to me.

Don't call me stupid while you're doing it.

It's fine. You could lie. I know you're paid to lie. Just don't insult our intelligence.

Now, I think the reason why he didn't want to admit it is obviously because they lost, right? If they don't lose that game, he probably has no problem saying like, yeah, I mean, we, you know, Scadaboo can't put the ball on the ground and he knows that and we are giving guys another chance because of that opportunity. But I think because they lost, a lot of fans would probably be like, why is Scadaboo not getting the ball? So it's a lot of things, but ultimately, yeah, you don't have to You don't have to lie to us like that.

We can use our eyes.

We watch the game. All right, let's do a quick whip around on some of the other games that we didn't get to do as deep of a dive into. But obviously we have fans of every single fan base that watched the show. So we want to acknowledge what happened around the league this week. Start off with Baltimore, Cleveland.

Fun fact, Trevor, the Ravens are 0-5 when Derrick Henry loses a fumble. Every single one of those losses, by the way, was one possession. And also an important game. Half of those were also against division opponents. It always happens at the worst time. In this particular game, his fumble set up the only Browns touchdown of the day.

This season, Henry has lost negative 19.2 EPA on carries. That is the sixth most EPA lost in the NFL. And that fumble resulted in a negative 5.6 EPA and even worse, a negative 14.2% win probability. So that one fumble was the play of the game, but it wasn't the only play in this game. The rest of the day, it's not like the Ravens offense was playing awesome. And I think if anything, it was indicative of just the style that the Browns play. they will drag you into a mud fight, and typically they're better at winning those than you are.

Yeah, and Brett, I think it was just overall from the Ravens in this game. Now, I know Browns fans are going to be like, hey, talk about our team. The Browns on offense still don't have a lot of explosives. Obviously, they got the one big explosive that mattered, the Passagieri Judy, which put them in field goal range for them to win this game, which I'm not trying to take anything away from them there, but.

Overall, just.

The efficiency and the overall explosiveness of this game from both sides wasn't what it needed to be, and I think it just shines a massive spotlight on what this Ravens team is without Lamar Jackson, even if Derrick Henry is in there, because even beyond the Derrick Henry fumble, okay, you look at this team, especially in the run game, their best rush concepts this year, it's mainly outside zone.

Outside zone, they've been fantastic this season. In this game, week six, they had six carries for only 22 yards, 3.7 yards per carry average, and just a 33.3% success rate on outside zone runs. It was their lowest such success rate in a single game this season, and their fewest yards per carry on such runs in a game this season. So again, hat tip to Cleveland's defense, which has played at a very, very high level this season.

I want to give them their credit here, but I think it also goes to the fact that when Lamar is not out there, this team is just far too easy to defend. You know, Zay Flowers is going to get anywhere from 50 to 90 yards, probably somewhere within there. Maybe there's a touchdown in there. Maybe there's not. But who else outside of Zay Flowers? And that includes Derrick Henry.

And I just think that it's a lot less of a guarantee that Henry's just going to be able to take over without Lamar out there. So to me, it's just this Ravens team is... not really a threat if they don't have Lamar out there.

I know, I know.

When the multi-time MVP isn't out there, I mean, great analysis, Trev. But seriously, it drops off even more than you would think for a team that you can name a lot of players that they have on their offense. It's just, they're just not explosive when it's not Lamar. Yeah.

I mean, if you're just looking at the carries that Derrick Henry had against stacked boxes, he had five carries for zero yards because what incentive do the Browns linebackers have for not just shooting gaps? Like they don't think that they're going to get beat deep right so yeah it's it's just it's a if anything this shows that lamar might be underpaid and he's one of the highest paid players in the nfl so moving on to uh jets patriots now i know this might be the least sexy way to talk about this game but it's the one i'm most passionate about the cory kiner legacy drive in the fourth quarter that's real football Eight straight carries, bro.

I need people to know that in the pre-show production meeting that we had, you very casually for this game was just like, yeah, I'm going to talk about the Corey Kiner Legacy Drive. And we were all like, the Corey Kiner Legacy Drive? What are we talking? And you were just like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to lead with the Corey Kiner Legacy Drive.

So go ahead. That's what gets the people going. The people just needed to know how passionate you were about this. You don't love it when you see Corey Kiner right tackle for 12 yards. Corey Kiner right guard for four yards. Corey Kiner up the middle for five yards. Just repeat ad nauseum for like five minutes of game clock while he chokes the life out of the New York Jets.

Oh my God, dude. Like this was great. He had a 66.7% success rate. He had like 44% missed tackle. Like he put the team on his back, carried them to victory. Literally, that to me was an inspired performance. And speaking as a millennial, that, you know, remembers Jonas Gray and all these other random Patriots running backs, which just have these legacy drives and legacy games. This is like peak Patriots.

How's any of the back sports illustrated cover athlete Jonas Gray? May we never forget two guys that I also want to highlight in this game, obviously, other than than Corey Kiner. Drake May, I think, has totally calmed down.

We talked about A.J.

Brown and how much of a non-factor and even, honestly, a negative factor he was in this game. It didn't matter. It didn't matter. May looks so comfortable and confident right now. Specifically, you remember through the first couple of weeks when he was really struggling and he was struggling, something that I pointed out is when he held onto the ball for longer than two and a half seconds, it was, it was not pretty. It was like, he just really started to panic two touchdowns and fantastic stats when holding onto the ball for longer than two and a half seconds in this game. And I think that's been a trend over the last couple of weeks. So I'm not here to just like proclaim like, Oh, Drake may is fixed,

but he really does look like he is totally calmed down, which is great to see because that's what you want to see. I think when we talk about the great quarterbacks in this league, a lot of times we focus on ceiling and what they have the potential to be. But to be honest with you, probably the most telltale sign of what makes a good to great quarterback in the NFL is your ability to go through your lulls and then bounce back. And not just like kind of bounce back like for a couple of games, like legitimately bounce back, like fix it. And right now it looks like Drake May has, not that he'll never struggle again, but he understands. He was able to get over this hump and really be able to attack an area that

he really struggled at the beginning of the season. And then I also want to shout out Elijah Ponder, the edge rusher from the New England Patriots, who is having one heck of a season today. And you need another heck of a game. Five pressures in this game, 19.2% pressure percentage. I mean, Ponder is, to me, the most underrated player on this team. I mean, he is just such a standout stud for them this season. So I wanted to shout out both of those guys and how they played this game.

And shout out Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Mustang legend. There it is.

There it is.

It's where my parents met, so I followed his career very closely. I might be the only person in national sports media following Ponder, but I have to. Anyway, Giant Saints, bar burner over that life.

Brother, absolute classic Jameis Winston game, okay? Over 400 yards of offense. Now, I know a good chunk of that wasn't Jameis, but it had the microcosms of a Jameis Winston football game. Over 400 yards of offense, but bad turnovers, and you lost the game. I can't tell you how many times as a beat reporter for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers I witnessed in person this exact movie. I got my popcorn out. I kicked my feet up and I said, I love this film. I've seen that. I could quote every line in this movie. And that's what it felt like.

We got in this one. This is transformers one, man. This means something to me. Can I mention, by the way, so JJ McCarthy came in cause they were like losing by a gazillion. Oh, you mean 18 quarter? 18? Yeah, no longer nine. He's 18 now. Yeah, 18 came in. He went through a full metamorphosis. Dude, 243 yards.

That's what I had to say.

In a quarter.

That's what I had to say. It wasn't all Jameis, but the whole theme of the game was Jameis. The whole theme was Jameis to.

The very end. That was unbelievable.

He actually got him.

They were close to scoring in the final second. He got him down there. He had a huge run. Had a dot, like 243 yards in a quarter. That's on 11 completions, dude. Unreal. Unreal.

Yeah.

By the way, the reason why the Saints had so many points, because you look at Tyler Shuck and it's like, he had like 140 something yards passing, three touchdowns. It's like, how is that? He had 30 something points. How is that possible? So this is where like numbers can lie to you a little bit. If you're looking at the scoring drives for the Saints, they had four of their scoring drives in this game that were 16 yards long.

28 yards long, 30 yards long, and 21 yards long. These four Giants turnovers absolutely killed them in classic Jameis fashion. But what it meant was the Saints, if you're looking at success rate and yards per play and all the play-to-play offensive stats, they weren't that good in this game. But each drive was so short, it didn't matter. They put up a bunch of points regardless. And Tyler Shuck, again, he capitalized. He made some good throws. Good throw to Olave down the boundary. But, man, if they just didn't turn the ball over, the Giants had a realistic shot of winning this game. So we talked Corey Kiner, legacy drive.

How about Jeremy Bernard, legacy game?

It's true. It's true. Like, Jeremy Bernard was great in this Bucs game. What was the final route total for him? He ran 44 routes, got 12 targets, 11 catches, 87 yards, and a touchdown for young Jeremy Bernard. It was great to see. Not a ton to talk about in this game. We kind of already talked about the McCarthy decision. Obviously, Pittsburgh wins this one. One thing that I will note, though, for as much as I love Jalen Daniels, and I love that he's getting an opportunity to play here in his rookie season, I did have seen a lot of people be like, Oh, like he's better than Mayfield. Like he's not the problem. Like obviously the bucks have a lot of different problems on their team, but I do think that we have to be honest with how Daniels

is playing. When he was pressured in this game, he was two for 10 with 15 yards in an interception. Just overall, he, his pocket management isn't good. He's still playing like he's at Kansas. Now it gives you some of the fun plays, like on the fourth down play where he scrambled for the first down. And then he took that big shot and it, you like makes you believe and you get pumped up and everything. And obviously I don't, those plays are great to watch, but in the grand scheme of things, this is still somebody that struggles to see the field, struggles to read the field, struggles to feel pressure, struggles to navigate the pocket. And so, um, the bucks just aren't in a great spot right now. And,

or maybe they are depending on if you just want them to get a higher draft pick.

So I think for a lot of bucks fans, this was like ideal. At this point in the season. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, it's hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel here outside of the, the 2027 NFL draft.

Yeah.

You just have to watch Ohio state on Saturdays. There's your light.

And I do anyway, I do.

Can't mention names, but you know, just throw on the Buckeyes. It's fine. Let's talk Bills Vegas. There's a lot of Bills fans in Vegas today, by the way. I've seen the Bills Mafia travel well in person when I went to a game at SoFi. They really showed out in Vegas. It sounded like a Bills game in there. No shade to Raiders fans. It's just when your team is in one of the tourism capitals of America, you're going to get a lot of away fans. That happened again, especially for a fan base that likes to travel a lot.

If you're looking at... the Bills offense in this game, beyond Josh Allen making one of the most Josh Allen plays I've ever seen, that like shot put touchdown that he had late in the game, which was ridiculous. If you're looking at the Bills run game, they had 4.3 yards per carry, still a 50% designed rush success rate.

That was higher than their designed run success rate from weeks one through five. So they didn't have a crazy yards per carry. In fact, their yards per carry in the first few weeks was higher at 5.1. They had the fourth highest yards per carry, but their success rate was higher in this game. As in we are getting the yards that we need to get with each carry.

It's not flashy. It's not sexy, not getting explosives, but we need four yards. We're getting four yards and we're doing it like 30 times in this game. It was just a crushing, crushing run game. And it did exactly what they needed to do. Josh made the exact amount of plays that he needed to make. Some of them crazier than others. And while the Raiders did give them a scare in the end, and they put up a good fight and showed that this is not a bad team, like they are right there, it's the second time this season where I still felt like they were a year away from winning that kind of game.

I agree with you, and look, it's not a moral victory type of a league, but I'm not on the Raiders coaching staff, so I'll talk about it as a moral victory. I mean, you look competitive against a team that could potentially win the Super Bowl this year, and not just competitive like you were there at the end, and this is not the only time that this has happened.

The Raiders have been able to go toe-for-toe with the best opponents they have played so far this season. I like the way their O-line played in this game, specifically four out of the five offensive linemen had pressure percentages below 5%, while Cousins had a time to throw of 2.89. So it's not like Cousins was getting rid of the ball in 2.45 seconds. Like he was holding onto the ball at an average amount that you would see around the NFL and the offensive line was really able to hold up. So it doesn't always all come together in one week, but it can show up in every single area of your team. And I think that we've seen that throughout the Raiders. So again, a year away, I agree with you, but man, it's good to It's cool

to look at this Raiders team and think like, yeah, I mean, we're already excited about what this team could be next year with another year of growth. And they're not even playing Mendoza yet.

Yeah. All right, let's get to Eagles Carolina. You know, the Eagles, it's, oh boy, it's been a rough week for them. You know, you're losing Jalen Hurts, we think, potentially for the season. It's indefinitely on IR with blood clots, who knows. obviously a very serious thing. We do not want him to get rushed back from this. So yeah, we'll see how long that takes. I'm just happy they caught it before something horrible happened. Obviously.

Yeah.

But you know, you're down offensive lineman, you're on RB six, I guess at this point, uh, you know, starting quarterback, like it's, it's just a mess in Philly. It's, It's a lost season for them at this point. But that being said, they did hold Bryce to his worst game of the season. The point that I want to make on that, though. So his EPA per dropback was plus. 04.

Worst game of the year for him. That would still be 16th among 31 starting quarterbacks in the NFL. His passer rating today was 91.7. That would still be 17th in the NFL. So his worst game of the year was an average starting quarterback. That is how well Bryce has played this year. So I know you look at the box score and you're like, oh, I didn't see a typical Bryce Day. That's good if that's your reaction, because that means a typical Bryce Day is like a top seven quarterback in the league. Right, right.

And I think his connection with we've praised their coaching staff, you know, whether it's Canales or Brad Izzik or like whoever is the, the main design of this, putting Teterone McMillan in the slot and letting him win is like a big slot. Obviously that's a great thing to see, but you also want to be able to see McMillan line up on the outside and win on the outside.

And in this game, Young completed season-high 13 of 21 attempts for 193 yards when targeting receivers aligned out wide against the Eagles, going 7 for 14 for 88 yards and two touchdowns on all other attempts. And so Bryce was great at it. I think McMillan was a big part of that. And so it was just good to see them being able to attack outside the numbers as well.

I think that that just speaks to the versatility.

Of all this. Chargers-Chiefs. Good God, Trevor. This is a bad football team. I'm talking about the Chargers, obviously. The Chiefs are a good football team. LA is bad, bad. Like, horrifically bad. Like, the last time they started 0-6, their head coach was their starting quarterback. That was when Jim Harbaugh was starting for them. It's been a long time since we've seen a Chargers team this bad. Thank Twitter for that one. It wasn't me. But, boy, this is like a historically... awful time to be a Chargers fan and that's a kind of a low bar to clear if we're being honest about it.

This is year three of Harbaugh in the previous two seasons he went 11 and 6 and 11 and 6 he was second in the division yeah they lost in the wild card both times and obviously you wanted to see that progress so this is a major hit but outside of the vibes just getting absolutely horrendous I can't see them moving on from either Herbert or Harbaugh so I think the most likely thing that's going to happen here is They're going to take a good hard look at their coordinators. I think we're getting some changes that are probably going to be made even in the middle of the season because they have to at this point with you having no wins. But ultimately, like a total down to the studs type of a rebuild, I don't

see that happening with this team. I think it's just you've got to find some building blocks going into the next season. And specifically, really the only thing that matters at this point for the Los Angeles Chargers is what is wrong with Justin Herberg. Does Herbert just not like McDaniel's offense? Does he just not want to play behind an offensive line of second and third stringers? I wouldn't blame him for any of that. But you have to definitively answer that question of what is wrong with him.

Because even for the harshest of critics of Justin Herbert, this season's a different level of what we've seen from him. And that's the worst part of it.

On the Chiefs' side, I mean, Kenneth Walker is still ridiculous, which I feel like we've said every single week. Plus. 15 EPA per touch. Only JSN is averaging more with a minimum of 50 touches. Also, Kenneth Walker became the first player with 750-plus scrimmage yards and eight touchdowns through the first five games of the season since Priest-Holmes for the 2002 Chiefs. So it's been almost a quarter century since somebody started this hot. Also their pass rush showed up for the first time since week one. So maybe they just have to play every game against the AFC West.

They had four sacks, their first sacks in like three and a half games. The pass rush basically disappeared since week one and then came back, which what does that say about the Chargers pass protection? I guess the Chargers only had a 27% success rate on offense, just domination from start to finish, whether it was Kenneth Walker, whether it was the pass rush. I mean, it, All phases, they just kicked their ass. All right, next game on the docket, Titans-Colts. Shout out to the Tennessee Titans, by the way, getting their first win of the season in dramatic fashion. At halftime, they had, I'm looking at it right now, a 4% chance to win because it was 13-0.

They rattled off 26 second-half points, got a bunch of help from their defense, a bunch of help from their special teams, had a punt block for a touchdown in this one. Both of their safeties, by the way, had 12-plus tackles in this game. Jeff Simmons had six pressures and two sacks. It was a complete team win. I'd say more so defense and special teams than offense. But hey, they won a game. It's great. Everything's hunky-dory in Nashville for a week. Meanwhile, everything awful in Indy. Talk about bad vibes. I have not seen Colts fans this... It's not even irate. It's broken. I have not seen a Colts fan base this broken in a very long time.

And they've put up with a lot in the last decade.

Well, Brad, I think the problem is that when you get to a point where your fan base just has complete apathy, like whether it's wins or losses, it doesn't really matter. That's when you know that you're in a bad place as a franchise. So obviously, shout out to the Titans. Obviously, it's a team that it's a new coaching staff. It's still a relatively young team. This is a great win to get, especially the comeback type of a win. It gives you belief. It stokes the flames of the competitiveness that you have throughout the next couple of weeks and the rest of the season. This is great for the Titans to obviously get this win here.

For the Colts, it goes kind of back to what we've talked about with the Colts, and that is they're fine, I guess. If the Colts made the playoffs this year, Brett, would you really care?

Would you give them a chance? I mean, I would care that they played. I would care in the sense that it's like, cool. I get to watch Jonathan Taylor and DeForest Buckner and maybe eventually Alec Pierce play football for another week. Those are fun players to watch. Josh Downs, like I love watching some of their players individually play football.

They're really, really good as a team. Are they anything close to what a Super Bowl contender should be?

That's what I'm saying. I'm not trying to be overly harsh on the Colts who do some things well, but I think the ceiling of this team was a wildcard victory at best. And I felt like they just ran it back. Like, I felt like that was the team last year. The record that they had through the first, what was it, eight, nine weeks of the season? Obviously, it was incredible. But they were basically playing perfect brand of football. And you knew that that wasn't going to last.

If you thought that it was going to last, you were sipping the Kool-Aid on it. So, I just... I felt like they ran a team back with an extremely low ceiling. A little bit of a different show today. We tried to hit a lot of different teams while also going in-depth on the ones that we really wanted to spend a lot of extra time with. So if you enjoyed this format a little bit more, let us know because we're a show of the people. And obviously we want to make this show as good as possible for you guys to enjoy the football content as much as you can. Shout out. To the internet outage at my house, which is why I'm in a new setting at my father-in-law's house. But you know what? You know what?

Big internet tried to keep us down. Can't do that here on NFL Pro. We're powering through. This is a Sunday slate. We had to get to it. We had to react to it. Shout out to the NGS people powering the entire show with all the great data that they have and the researchers getting us the data in easily understandable ways. Shout out to the production team for bringing this all together and making our nonsense hopefully sound a little less nonsense-y. Shout out to Brett Coleman, my co-host here. And I'm Trevor Sikama saying thank you guys so much for watching. And we'll see you guys later this week for the next preview show on Week 7.

See you guys then.

Thank you for listening to our Week 7 Reaction Show. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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