THE HERD – HOUR 3 – Urban Meyer on Georgia, Texas & Indiana Losses

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0:26 By the way, Indiana just lost at home to Ohio State. Now they've got to go to Michigan Saturday. And they've got a new quarterback maybe with the Wolverines.

0:37 We'll see.

0:37 Urban Meyer worked the Ohio State-Indiana game in the wildest. You have to go back to like 1936 where five of the top seven teams in the AP poll or the poll were beaten. It's like you're getting around to the 30s. Have you ever seen a day like that?

0:57 I hadn't, and I misfired on the whole conversation about NIL and transfer portal.

1:01 I thought the rich would get richer.

1:03 What it's done is make parity in college football. I've talked to many of my colleagues in the last couple weeks, and you flip on UCLA and then you flip on Alabama.

1:12 What's the difference? I don't know. I mean, one team runs the ball a little better, and that's UCLA.

1:18 So it's amazing what has really happened to the game of college football with the NIL and with transfer portal.

1:26 Yeah, it really is. I like all the chaos. I thought it was fun. So here was my thing on Indiana. They're very well coached. I'm not denying that. And I think Ohio State, because they're really built on defense, coaching, one back, and a superstar receiver. Julian Sand's not carrying this team. I think they can win a bunch of games without Julian Sand for a while. Let's start with that.

1:52 Do you think they can win with Fahey or a backup quarterback in the next four or five weeks?

1:57 I think it's a flip the coin because I was there when the backup came in, Fahey and And sure, he hasn't practiced as a starter, but they went reverse when he was in there. But I'm going to say this about the difference maker is the obvious, is Jeremiah Smith. You watch the game-winning touchdown that's saying through to him, that was not a good throw.

2:17 I mean, he just launched it.

2:18 That was like in the school days when you have an eighth grader playing with third graders. That's what it looked like. I mean, Jeremiah Smith just jumped up between two people. I mean, he was stationary. That's how bad a throw was. and he just jumped up and caught the ball. So Ohio State can do about what it can with Jeremiah Smith. You go to USC, and I think people are.

2:40 Sleeping on USC a little bit.

2:42 I know it's a topic of conversation, Lincoln rally, this, and I think the Rubicon moment for USC has been to go on the road, and I know Penn State's not very good, but that's a game USC most of the time loses. So I think they're really coming on. Those young players, Colin, aren't young anymore.

3:00 So Trent Mosley, Mark Bowman. No, they've got like six freshmen and they're all like five star. They're all excellent. They didn't miss on any of their big recruits. They can all play. And Jaden Maiava plays with a ton of confidence, especially at home. S.E. 's different. OK, so I want to talk about the Texas situation. So there was there was a and you know this. When Arch Manning came out, a lot of people said, listen, it's a small academic school in Louisiana. Now, you know, you recruited Louisiana. There's all sorts of talent, but it's an academic school. And there was a lot of questions. People said, well, he hasn't faced very good competition. And I will say when I watch him play coach, he looks a little

3:39 unsettled and overwhelmed and we can keep blaming Sark, but this offense yards per play hasn't been this bad in a decade. Would you make, I know it's a Manning. Would you make a quarterback change?

3:52 Uh, I can give you a similar conversation we had as a staff with Chris Leak and Tim Tebow. Chris Leak was struggling a little bit, but we really weren't doing right by Chris Leak. And I'm not saying Sark's doing this with Arch. We changed and did more what Chris Leak does well, and we ended up winning the national championship with him.

4:10 I see the same thing.

4:11 The final two drives against Ohio State, I finally sat down and said, wow.

4:16 There's Arch Manning. Here we go.

4:18 And it's been in reverse since I see the, I see the unsettled feet. I see lack of confidence. You saw a change in the Wolverines made and it was instant, instant, uh, you know, the excitement, the enthusiasm on the team picked up.

4:32 Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if the backup can help you in. I think about it. Yeah, no.

4:38 Um, Okay, so I just made the analogy. When you have young kids and they're five, six years old and you take them on a road trip to see grandma, as a parent, you have to bake in a couple of meltdowns. You can make them some PBJs and you give them crayons. They're going to have a couple of meltdowns in the five-hour drive. When you go on the road in college football, And you've got seven officials every game all over the country. There's going to be a 59-year-old bank guy with a bad hip, and he's going to blow a call late. And you've just got to say, we're not going to put the game in the officials' hands.

5:14 So I look at Notre Dame, and I'm like, you blew a red zone or two opportunity. You were bad defensively on third down. You know, you didn't play very well. What do you do when you went on the road? Did you bake in? Listen, there's going to be some calls not go our way.

5:29 You know, when I was a young coach, I was one of those lunatics that would scream at the officials all the time. Then finally, one time I read this book, Lead for God's Sakes, which is a whole nother conversation.

5:38 And it's about being an example for your players.

5:40 And I thought, every time I do that, and then I go in on Sunday and the officials are right most of the time. And I said, from that point forward, I never really got after an official. I'm seeing stuff though now, this year in particular, that how does that happen?

5:54 I mean, I don't understand.

5:56 I understand maybe a mishold, but there's some of these other ones like the PI you're looking at right there.

6:00 How do you miss that? So I have a solution if you're interested.

6:04 I am.

6:05 Give me it.

6:06 Okay, we're going to take 10. You're going to have 10 full-time. That's all they do. They're paid well. You find the money somewhere and you pay 10 full-time officiating crews. The CFP picks the games they're at every week.

6:20 And then they go. Now, you're still going to have the other games.

6:23 Because fiscally, it's impossible at all the different levels of football to have all professional officials.

6:28 You can't do that. But you can have 10. You can have 10.

6:32 And when BYU plays Notre Dame, you have professional. That's all they do for a living. They're college football officials. They work at it year-round. They get fired immediately. You are a full-time college football official. And you have 10 of them.

6:47 10 groups.

6:47 That's it. For the smaller games... That's the way it is.

6:50 You're going to play with the old officials, and they're quality officials, but you can't have some of the mistakes you're making now. That's got to be a full-time job. It's too important now, Colin. Yeah, there's just too much money. Let's look at the AP top 10. So I had Miami and Notre Dame were my opinion. Miami, Notre Dame and Ohio State were the best teams in the country.

7:09 Maybe Georgia. Georgia lost. It's SEC. It's, you know, listen, it happens. Did anybody here, are you shocked? You know, BYU got a lot of money. Are you shocked that they beat Notre Dame? Are you shocked? Are they a legitimate number two?

7:24 I think it's still to be determined. The Bear, Bachmeier is one of my favorite players. I think he's Tebow rewritten. The way he leads, the way he runs, the way he just moves the ball is Uh, there are physical aggressive outfit. I did not see that happening. I thought Notre Dame, I thought Notre Dame was especially their defense.

7:44 One of the best in the country by far, but they haven't, they weren't challenged. And now you get challenged and you, you found out a little bit about your locker room. You found out about maybe about your staff. I don't know that, but when you get to the fourth quarter and you know, you've been kind of wiping guys out, you get it, you know, you get it, they check your whole card and it's, you're not there.

8:05 Coach Freeman and everybody's got to get right. Cause that, that was, uh, BYU was the better football team. That was not an upset in my mind if you're watching it.

8:13 If you watch that game, you're like, I'm not really sure. Maybe in Notre Dame, Notre Dame would win by a field goal. When BYU was bringing all those offensive linemen in, I'm like, Notre Dame is struggling on third down to make stops. What in the world are we supposed to make with UCLA and Bob Chesney and he takes over for Cignetti and brings some Is UCLA one of those, well, you know, the schedule, because you can make an argument it hasn't been a great schedule, but they did beat Oregon.

8:46 What do you make of UCLA? They don't even have any NIL money. I mean, I look at their schedule, Michigan State, Nevada, Minnesota. That's a lot of wins. That is a lot of Ws.

8:57 We had coach Jesse on a podcast and I don't know him. And I walked away from that podcast and go, my God, this guy's a beast. And I've done my homework on the side. And, you know, whenever you, there, there's two ways to kind of secure pretty much be in every game you play. And he obviously invested in offense line. Their offense line is outstanding. Maybe the best in college football.

9:18 Wow.

9:19 They come pounding off the ball. Whoever their line coach is, we're probably going to get them a raise today. I watch him every week, not because I have to, because I really enjoy watching offensive line play. I really enjoy watching the run game, and he's as good as there is. They're a physical outfit. He's coach of the year, you know, unless something happens.

9:39 Can they make a run?

9:40 I don't know.

9:41 I don't know if they can make a run. I think there's certainly a playoff team. Again, you take the uniforms off and just watch. There's certainly a playoff caliber team. If you didn't know it was UCLA, you say absolutely.

9:54 Yeah the um so like with sark and arch manning and kyle whittingham and underwood bryce underwood you get into these weird spots where one's a manning and then one's like making five million dollars and whittingham takes a job at michigan and his take is i didn't pay him and now my guy and then you put in the back the backup car and you're like oh that's kind of fun and he fits our offense Is it hard?

10:20 Now you didn't, you didn't coach in the NIL era, but you had to, you know, you had to make moves when you've, you've got somebody like maybe a Florida kid and you have to bench a Florida kid or something. Is it hard for like Whittingham and Michigan to be like, guys, I know the administration, you're paying them a lot of money, but you hired me to win games.

10:36 I gotta, I gotta play the other guy. I don't think that even comes into it. Once again, I did not coach in the NIL era. I have talked to Kyle and not so much about that or Coach Witt about that, but I know those guys don't. I can speak for Coach Witt, and he gives too damn about NIL or about the AD or about the president or some rich booster.

10:59 He's going to do what's right to go win the game. Here's the question.

11:03 Would Bryce have come back and won that game? I think the answer is no. So I think that's what Sarkeesian or any coach got to look at and right now say, who gives us the best opportunity to go win that game?

11:14 And Coach Whittingham made the right decision.

11:16 You know, Ohio State's done a nice job. So they've spent a lot of money on their roster. I'm not denying it. But it feels to me that they go out and they mesh. They marry high school recruiting and the NIL well. They don't go like Brian Kelly, Lincoln, Deion Sanders. A lot of these schools, good God, they bring in 40 guys. Now, Chesney did too because UCLA needed more players. But at Ohio State, how do they view NIL? Because it kind of feels like they don't have any locker room stuff. They're not a perfect team, but everything kind of marries well. What's Ryan's philosophy on it?

11:55 I think there's three people at Ohio State are obviously the head coach, Ryan Day, but Mark Pantone is the best GM in the sport. And he's the best evaluator. He was a student assistant for me at Florida. He's been doing it for a long time. I trust his evaluations over any coach I've ever had, which says something.

12:13 He's a tireless evaluator. But he also, along with Mickey Marotti, he's a third person strength coach. He's the locker room guy. So you have a locker room guy. You have Mark Pantone and the head coach. And he's been having a little bit of fluidity in his coordinators and changing coaches. So there's three people that are a consciousness there. And I think before anyone comes into that organization, all three have to agree because there's no chance.

12:39 You're right.

12:40 Why has Oregon gone through? You can't say all Oregon's got bad coaches. There must have been a couple.

12:46 I don't know.

12:47 I can't speak for what's in the locker room. Same with Texas. How does that happen? There's no better players in America than Texas has.

12:53 So why?

12:55 Sark Olson, what? He can't call plays. I'm hearing people say, oh, let's play. There's other stuff in there you have to lift up the hood and find out. And that's where you got to give Ohio State credit.

13:03 You're right. You just don't hear much.

13:05 No.

13:05 All they do is try to go win games. That's it.

13:08 Yeah.

13:08 There's no drama. They marry the two together. They go get a Caleb Downs or they go get a great player. And it just always kind of fits with them.

13:17 And let's see. Let's see.

13:18 Do we have Ohio State schedule? Let me put Ohio State. Put that up there, guys. I'm sorry. This is because I look at Julian saying I think has some physical limitations. It's nothing against him, but I don't think this was a Julian saying led team. I think it's defense. I think it's coaching. I think it's Smith. And I like Bo Jackson. I think he's a good back. Let me see the schedule here. OK, so we got USC. Oh, no, they got two weeks to prepare for USC.

13:43 Yep.

13:44 Okay, well, that's a huge advantage. And then they get Oregon home, Northwestern home.

13:50 Oh, I don't know.

13:50 That looks pretty good, Coach. I don't have a problem saying 11-1. I don't know.

13:56 That's hard for me to disagree other than when I saw what happened when the backup came in.

14:01 Well, he wasn't ready for the game. That'd be like making J-Mac host this show right in the middle of it if I got, you know, some ice cream.

14:08 That would be awful. Is that what you're saying?

14:11 Yeah. Urban Myers, great seeing you, coach.

14:16 So good to see you, Colin. Thanks.

14:17 Okay, so he's got Indiana at Michigan Saturday. How much fun? I mean, it was chaos. Saturday was just– and Miami, let me tell you something. Thank your lucky stars you didn't lose. I just love the idea. everybody's just kind of mushed in the middle. I mean, this is the NFL. You're like Rams against the Cardinals at SoFi. No, Arizona totally outplayed them. What am I watching? That's when football is at its best. Not when the season starts and you're like, yeah, Bama will face either Georgia or Ohio state or Clemson. You think that's really, I said this earlier.

15:00 I want my college football to be like a thriller as a movie. Is that scene to scene, I don't know what's happening. And it's going to be chaos and drama. I have no idea of the ending. I don't want my college football season to be a documentary where I know the ending. I'm just getting more stuff filled in.

15:20 I don't want that. And that's all we had for 20 plus years. It was a documentary. We all knew how it ended. It was one or two SEC schools or Ohio State. I want more. Ohio State can still win. Right, but it's a lot closer.

15:37 Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays at noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific on Fox Sports Radio, FS1, and the iHeartRadio app.

15:46 Jay Mack with the news.

15:53 I love how you forget the one show where.

15:56 You fell ill after the first hour.

15:58 You don't remember that? Somebody came up to me the other day. I literally did a show, folks.

16:03 Yeah.

16:04 And I had this virus, which, by the way, Ryan, my producer, got. And he's he's never sick. He was gone for a week. And I don't know what happened, but I literally started the show, and I literally said, oh, I'm going to throw up on the air. I said, bye-bye. Thanks for flying United. And I literally toppled to the floor, and my whole staff got it, and they were gone.

16:25 You heroically stepped up and crushed.

16:27 I mean, I.

16:27 Basically was like Snoop Huntley coming in and then.

16:31 Delivering, getting the win. You got all the accolades.

16:34 It was great.

16:35 All right, let's get to real guys who deliver.

16:37 Brock Purdy, the MVP leader. 49ers host the commandos tonight. Uh, Monday night football, big favorites are the Niners. Uh, interestingly, Kyle Shanahan is comparing his quarterback to Matt Ryan. I don't see Matt Ryan, but here's Kyle Shanahan on his QB.

16:56 When I say someone's automatic, it's when you put in a game plan and stuff and you practice certain plays or certain coverages and you get those coverages. Uh, those guys are pretty automatic, even if the pass rush is there. Um, They know how to get rid of the ball. They know how to make plays. And those guys both do that at such a high level. Different styles, built differently.

17:14 Brock's a little bit more mobile. Matt's a little bit taller, a little bit leaner. But two very good quarterbacks.

17:23 I don't think there's any point, any question. Poe, snap. Brock sees the field. Like we talk about, Arch Manning doesn't quite see the field. Brock Purdy sees the field. From this minute that ball snapped, he just, he throws it to the right place. Doesn't mean he doesn't throw picks because he's an aggressive thrower, which I like. Doesn't mean he's not going to throw interceptions. I want You throw the ball down the field to Mike Evans. I want a seam route to Kittle. Balls get tipped. But you can tell with Purdy, like, he sees the field. 90% of the time, that ball's going exactly where it should in a very sophisticated offense.

17:57 Yeah, it's weird.

17:57 Shanahan sees Matt Ryan. I see Patrick Mahomes. I mean, essentially, Purdy doesn't have Mahomes' arm, but processing, he's got an edge over Mahomes.

18:04 It comes out quicker.

18:06 They're both very mobile, can get away from everybody. People are sleeping on Purdy. You finally seem to be coming around to him. The staff tells me he's second in MVP odds. He's not the leader, but we know they have the best.

18:19 Record in football.

18:20 Well, the first four years when there was clouds in the sky, he couldn't hold onto the ball. So like he was a quarterback, weather driven quarterback, but whatever it is, he's kind of, You know, it's early, but he's been wildly impressive. Yes, yes, for sure.

18:37 All right, let's go back to Sunday Night Football. Bit of a snoozer last night. Everybody had the over that never got close. Packers just dismantled Dallas. Dallas defense wasn't the problem.

18:48 It was the offense.

18:48 They were terrible, and they couldn't keep up with Jordan Love, who had a pretty good game and would have had a better game if Golden and Watson didn't drop easy touchdown passes. Here's LaFleur praising his QB.

19:00 He took a lot of shots, too, and he was tough, and he keeps battling, and, you know, the guy, he's a G.

19:09 We talk about playing like a G.

19:10 He's a G, and he does a great job just commanding the offense, doing a great job converting critical third downs throughout the course of the game, so I thought he played pretty well.

19:21 You know what's amazing? This is why you have to be careful. about judging young people on one mistake. Now, if you make multiple mistakes, it can be a sign of a lapse of character. Jordan Love, remember when he was leaving college at Utah State, there was a little incident. You could look it up. It was something that college kids do from time to time. Yet he has been so mature, so good at the mic, such a good team guy. I think Dak Prescott also has had like a little college guy mistake. Dak's one of the most mature.

19:55 You got to be careful about when you evaluate quarterback. Now, if you have multiple instances of immaturity, that's different. But I think I remember Jordan Love came out and people were like, he's a little squirrely. He had an incident. He's a college kid. It was an age appropriate college mistake.

20:12 I look at Jordan Love and I see I see Dak Prescott with a better arm. I think he's got a livelier arm and he's more athletic. He throws. I'm telling you right now, if you lined up quarterbacks, best deep ball in the league. I'm not sure anybody throws an easier, prettier deep ball than Jordan Love.

20:30 The guy has three good games against bottom feeders.

20:32 And all of a sudden, Dallas is a bottom feeder.

20:35 Yeah.

20:36 Dallas has the one of the worst defenses in the league. And they also beat Tampa one in one in five Tampa, which stinks. And then they beat the Bears when you had the backup quarterback and everybody knew it was going.

20:45 To happen, except for us. I think we both had the Bears in that one. I just need to wait and see. Let's see how he does against the Lions.

20:50 Oh, wait.

20:51 Their secondary's garbage, too. So, yeah, Love is going to cook, but this team's criminally overrated. Sorry, Packers fans. Finally, let's go to that morning game in Wembley. I actually had to wake up early Sunday morning, Cowherd. So I watched most of this, and I did have Texans minus two and a half. They got, or sorry, plus two and a half. They got a really nice win.

21:10 C.J.

21:11 Stroud was, I mean, listen, man. He's not the problem. Colin, do you remember before the season?

21:16 He's been good this year.

21:17 There were these contract talks, and Stroud and his agent, Mulegeda, were like, no, we want top of the market. And Houston's like, we're not paying you. And so they're in an impasse. His price has gone way up.

21:28 He's been excellent. No, he's had a very good... I thought that game... was as good as pro football gets. I thought Trevor was amazing. Parker Washington, Travis Hunter were amazing. I like the play calls by Liam Cohen. They don't have enough of a pass rush in Jacksonville. But I thought Nico Collins, I thought C.J. Stroud. I mean, I thought he was absolutely lights out. Jacksonville had, now again, look at the pocket. Look at the time. Jacksonville had no, I mean, look at these throws. He was fantastic.

21:57 Yeah, Jacksonville's defense looked like it had been in London for two weeks, right?

22:00 They just looked tired in that game, straddling up and down. Now, interesting point.

22:04 Marvin Harrison comes to the Texans, played 12 snaps, and got three catches.

22:10 On four targets.

22:10 He had one really good catch where he got popped. I think it's going to work there. And I'll tell you what, it's going to be a really bad look for the Arizona Cardinals if he goes in and he doesn't have to be Nico Collins. But if he goes, what if he becomes a 68 catch for touchdown guy?

22:26 He's going to be there, too.

22:26 Yeah.

22:27 Yeah. Yeah.

22:28 And by the way, they're one spectacular. It's going to be, you know, another sign that Arizona can't get anything right. Because he was invisible in arrows. It's not that he struggled. He had like five catches this year.

22:43 By the way, second bet I made this week, Houston Texans are eight and a half. I've seen up to nine and a half against the Giants this week. I'm telling you, the Giants internally have major problems. That's a big number to lay for Stroud. But this Houston team.

22:59 Remember, 0-4.

23:00 Last 0-4 team to make the playoffs. I think it was the 92 Chargers or something. That division is there for the taking, Colin. We like Jacksonville.

23:09 I like Houston more.

23:11 All right.

23:12 That was great professional football. I mean, it was, you know, that game sometimes at halftime, you're like, I'm going to go for a walk. This stinks. It was so well played. Smart coaching. Great, great playmakers. Unbelievable quarterback play in London. They got a good show. J-Mac with the news.

23:33 Well, that's the news.

23:34 And thanks for stopping by.

23:35 The Herdline News.

23:39 Urban Meyer stopped by.

23:41 You know, it's funny. Urban knows more college football, you know, almost than anybody I ever know, right? And even Urban admitted. He's like, yeah, the NIL, I thought it was going to make the rich richer. They just did the exact opposite. And that's why when people come out and they don't like change in college football, college football, and I love it, needed change. I mean, Alabama was dominating the sport and they were playing three or four hokey September games. You know, the SEC would play eight conference games. Other conferences played nine.

24:12 You couldn't even get the schedules right. They were totally uneven. You know, some teams would challenge themselves. Notre Dame, you know, is in a conference kind of, sort of, I think they should go full-time into the ACC, my opinion. Yeah. But, you know, you can dream up, but they always say studies have been done where people dream up scenarios of bad things that are going to happen, and they say like 90% of the time they never happen. Sometimes the media tries too hard to dream up scenarios where bad things are going to happen. All you had to do with the NIL, A, players deserve to be paid, and B, it was fairly predictable that that schools with richer alumni, like BYU or Notre Dame or Miami, you know, some

25:01 of these schools with good academics, were probably going to be Vanderbilt. You know, you're probably going to be interesting and win some bidding wars on top players. That was fairly predictable. And the transfer portal, I do think there needs to be, even the NFL has like free agency guidelines. Anytime you introduce anything new to the market, and you don't have guardrails or great leadership, which the NCAA doesn't provide, you're going to have mistakes. But I think the 2014 playoff is going to look like what we watched this weekend.

25:30 You're going to see, as everybody gets smushed to the middle, you're going to see all sorts of wacky. I mean, every year since NIL was created, it gets a little crazier and a little harder to predict. That's the NFL. Did you think the Seahawks were going to win the Super Bowl last year with Sam Darnold? Oh, you didn't call it either. Did you think New England was going.

25:50 To get there?

25:51 The year before, they were awful. Last year, they got there with Drake, man, a bad old line. Like, what? That's what college football is becoming. What did I just watch?

26:00 Thank you. Finally. It's the Herd.

26:04 Be sure to catch live editions of The Herd weekdays at noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific.

26:11 So the Rams are two and four, and everybody's freaking out. And one of the things we talked about, people say, well, their special teams are bad. Well, they were terrible last year. They're much better at corner than they were last year, but they're worse on first down. So last year, the Rams, here's a stat, their third downs, they led the NFL in third and the fewest yards. So it really helped Matt Stafford. You were just guessing on defense what they were going to do. So Puka has a big year, and Devontae, I think, led the NFL in touchdowns, and Stafford's an MVP. Well, this year they're not running the ball as well on first down, and therefore Stafford's in a lot of second and longs and third and longs.

26:49 And he's a 38-year-old quarterback, and he can't do it with his feet. So you have to just call and design perfect plays, and they've had tight end injuries. So I don't think they're that far off. I just think I think, you know, also you kind of think of them, you put them in the same class as the Niners this year and the Seahawks and the Rams. The Seahawks last year were blowing teams out. The Niners this year are blowing teams out. The Rams had nine one-score games last year and were four and five in those games.

27:18 And they've got a bunch of one-score games this year and they just keep turning it over. So they're a prettier team than they are an intimidating team. They're pretty, they're smart, they're clever. I think they miss Miles Garrett. When you get these leads late and you need, you know, Aaron Donald got us, remember he got to Joe Burrow?

27:35 That was the ball game in the Super Bowl. They need a closer. They need Mariano Rivera. They got leads. They can't close them. They need Miles Garrett back. That's number one. And number two, they got to run the ball better. But Matt Hasselbeck says it's not just special teams.

27:50 You said you think the problem is first down. I think the problem is first person. They're the problem. The Rams are the problem. It's Rams on Rams mistakes. It's stuff that you don't expect from these guys. Fourth in one, we got a blocker for every defender. We don't go to the right guys. We leave people unblocked. It's just uncharacteristic.

28:11 It is funny, like when I hear people nationally typically talk about the Rams, like, oh, special teams are the problem. You know, like I know, special teams were the problem last year, and they were way good enough to overcome it. They're not good enough to overcome the mistake.

28:24 The mistakes they're making now.

28:25 So right now they're better in the secondary than last year. They're not running the ball, however, as well as last year. And it shows once again, when people freaked out about running backs, not getting paid, we said, folks, Running backs will always have value. Look at Sam Darnold this year without Kenneth Walker. Suddenly look at Mahomes off a two-year inefficient streak with Kenneth Walker. Look at the Eagles when Saquon's hurt. Look at the Rams now not running it with the kind of consistency. The quarterback was MVP last year, and Stafford's good, but he's not MVP close right now.

29:00 So I've said this about Brock Purdy. Take out Christian McCaffrey from Brock Purdy. Look at the numbers. Running backs are always going to have value. What's interesting is I couldn't even, I couldn't tell you the last great running back year. It just doesn't feel like it's a position anybody wants to play anymore. The high school kids that are talented, they want to be edge rushers, quarterbacks, wide receivers, corners.

29:20 You can make great money. Running back, shorter careers, don't get the second big contract. It just feels like I was looking up this morning, Ole Miss has a pretty good running back. I think Florida State's got a pretty good running back. It's not a big running back year. So when you have a running back shortage, I mean, Ashton Gentry was the best running back in college. You've watched him. I watched him. Does he feel like a difference maker not really kind of small it's okay i mean the kid from arkansas mike washington the fourth round kid bigger stronger looks just as explosive so It's, you know, running back position is fascinating to me. And right now, Blake Corm and Kyron Williams are, Rams are one of

29:58 the few teams have two running backs that are dynamic. Jets also have two running backs that are very, Allen and Brees Hall. Those are, they ran the ball against New England. They're interesting. All right. Monday night football tonight. I'm going to take close. Niners, close. over underdog washington it's yeah it's a circle game washington the commanders finally get some attention keep your eye brock purdy may face a little pressure standalone game let's see if he can handle it a lot of pressure some people don't react with quite as well as those early window games on sunday with the old shanahan making all the right calls we'll see