Biggest Surprises of the NFL Season with Ollie Connolly

00:00:09
Speaker 1: Welcome to NFL Daily, where we're still getting over Nick Benito sacking us earlier this week.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: I am Greg Rosenthal.

00:00:17
Speaker 1: I am here in the Talk Sports studios talking to one of my favorite analysts in the game. Yes, it's an extra show. We're here in London. I wanted to have Ali on more than once. Allie Connolly, Welcome, and I love the fact that you are no longer really on Twitter or any social media, so you have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to Nick Benito.

00:00:39
Speaker 3: I only know through listening to this show. Getting out of the takest fit is fun. You getting burned by the quickest play off the ball in the NFL is one of the highlights of my season.

00:00:50
Speaker 1: Totally burned. And the sad thing is I talked him up. Okay, I gotta get over it, but just people just keep bringing up. So Allie Connolly runs one of the best substacks and podcasts in the game, The Read Optional Go Subscribe. It is the best, most in depth if you're really into football podcasts out there with John Ledyard and Ali also writes these great pieces as part of the substack. So we're going to go over just four weeks in back and forth, just some surprises, and we only have a little bit of time here, so let's just get going with it.

00:01:26
Speaker 2: I'll have you start.

00:01:27
Speaker 3: The number one surprise to me is the efficiency of the Patriots passing game. I've had high expectations as the McDaniels may polish it, but this has exceeded my expectations.

00:01:37
Speaker 2: How excited are you feeling?

00:01:39
Speaker 1: Are you just sucking up to me knowing I'm a Patriots fans going with this as you're like your first thing.

00:01:44
Speaker 3: No, it's kind of a pad in the bag because I did mean as pod in the offseason, I did the quarterback draft while you picked for the next three years, and I think I took Drake May like fourth overall. I was kind of having an out of body experience, and I think I took him full. So I'm trying to rev my own, you know, crank the juice.

00:01:59
Speaker 1: Of Josh McDaniels has done a really good job watching them every week. That just looks like, oh yeah, this looks like a highly schemed offense that knows how to get receivers open. What have you seen that he's done to help Drake May?

00:02:14
Speaker 3: Specifically, the thing that really stands out is how expansive it is, how sophisticated it is, how much new stuff there is every week. And I thought, when McDaniel's got there, it's really this fusion of here's all the glorious stuff. When we're in the passing game, it's all the Brady goodness, and then in the wrong game, I'm going to take all the camstuff I around from twenty twenty and it's the first time micro as a coach, I've been able to fuse those two ideas together. But the volume and the amount of different patches every week, that's not something I kind of associated with. Drake maker me into the season, I thought maybe he would be a little bit overwhelmed by all the bradiness of the passing game and it would take maybe two years of the partnership to really tap into everything. So they mount they put on his plate, and how successful and how effortless. A lot of it looks for me guy all wide open, to be fair, but the effortless of him running the whole operation stands out to me.

00:03:05
Speaker 1: He's so young and the Drake may believers in the draft of which you were one. Nate Tice was certainly one always thought he should have gotten more credit for how he read the field, like how smart he was. How is that showing up, because there are moments still like that, the turnovers as well as he played in the Pittsburgh game. Other than the turnovers, like there are plays where he fritzes out a little bit. What have you seen in terms of him having that balance of like being that incredible athlete and just.

00:03:38
Speaker 2: Doing kind of what McDaniels wants him to do.

00:03:40
Speaker 3: I think you're just gonna have to live with that being two Also boneheaded plays a game, but that's down from the five to four that was in good weeks last season, and furth long than I thought he would be. Everything is just so fast with him so quick, the decision making, knowing where to go with the ball. His eyes are never in the wrong place. Now every makes a good decision. Once he gets the is kind of a different conversation. But he knows immediately what to attack and does it really quickly. And that's just not what was happening last season. I mean, it was a mess anyway all through last season, behind the scenes, obviously on the field. I just I'm surprised he looks so comfortable, and I'm surprised how much they've put on his plate.

00:04:19
Speaker 1: Solely, I'm excited that he gets a national stage against the Bills defense it's not playing that well.

00:04:29
Speaker 2: I think that could be a fun, high scoring game.

00:04:31
Speaker 1: I do like there is part of me that is watching it and can't quite believe that a very effective offense exists in the year twenty twenty five in the NFL without a great offensive line in particular, and with Hunter Henry probably as the key like pass catcher on the team. Like it's Hunter Henry, it's Digs a little bit now, but like the offense kind of goes through Hunter Henry, and this is an effective way of like doing business.

00:04:59
Speaker 2: The offense goes through May.

00:05:00
Speaker 3: His threat as a downhill runner makes them essentially plus one in every area in the field because people are terrified of him running downhill and they've flashed that early on with some of the option games stuff, and so it just broadens the field for every defense. And so you get why it's Hunter Henry who is not quick off the ball wide open eight yards down the field basically every other play. So I think that you're seeing with May this like force multiplying effect that the really great ones have, and it's just strange to see guys that open when the talent is not all the way there.

00:05:36
Speaker 2: And the connection with.

00:05:37
Speaker 3: Digs Now from last week in particular, I think that's really ramping up. They have great chemistry. May may already be on the three best back shoulder throw guys in the league. That's actually a pretty short list at the moment because Aaron's not throwing them so well in more these days. But he just feels like the complete full field threat individually the way you get with the really great ones Alan Lamar, and it's just you get the consistent that One of the things I do love the grendular things about him. He's such a power thrower, and you love recognizes when he has to take pays off the ball. Everything about him slows down, like you can see him thinking, oh no, I've got to be really slow on this one. Josh has told me I got one to and I hit the checkdown, and he just seems bored of the easy stuff, but he actually he gets to and does the easy stuff. Compared to when you watch sometimes Daniels and particularly Caleb, it's like they're just not interested in the easy work.

00:06:25
Speaker 2: They want to do the really difficult stuff.

00:06:27
Speaker 1: If we just clipped that last forty five seconds and sent it to Bill Simmons, he would have you.

00:06:32
Speaker 2: On his podcast. So we need to do this.

00:06:34
Speaker 1: We need to sell some subscriptions while you're here. We only have so much time, you know, together. How is the Will Campbell experience in your mind so far? Some good run game reps for sure. To this untrained die, the.

00:06:50
Speaker 3: Run game reps are legit, and getting him out into space is like a prominent part of the offense that there is a shelf life on that stuff. I alway thinking about this with Penny Sewel, where they'll have three or four plays a season where it's all out in space and it's usually like Sunday night football or a primetime game, and so I think people believe that's like a core element of the Lion's offense when it's like, really, that's four or five plays a season and he's just a complete freak and ninety percent of his work is doing the dirty offensive line work at the highest level you can in the league. With Campbell, I still have real concerns about absorbing knock back power and not even against a Jared ver So, the truly great power rush. I just don't think you can quite sink and bend the way the real great ones can to absorb power, and so it's more of a finesse game at Bradbury's been really good inside talk about surprise of the season, having like a quality center and a league where there's like three good centers at the moment, that's been a surprise. But Campbell specifically, I still just like sometimes you get in your gut, I'm like, I think he could be a really really gifted guard and you could unlock more in the offense with him at guard than just trying to force tackle. Because you took him at a premier spot in the draft.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: My hope was just can he be Anthony Costanzo, Not the same style, but like that level of player Bernard Rhymean, that'd be fine.

00:08:03
Speaker 2: I'd be fine, But I think he could be Joe Toney.

00:08:05
Speaker 1: God, that's fair, Okay, my first surprise, and I'll speed it up. It's kind of the teams that are bad at rushing the ball, so it's like the whole offseason, it's.

00:08:15
Speaker 2: The year, you know, now where everyone's going to run and.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: It's like maybe the defenses were more ready for that than we think. First of all, and then it's specifically the teams that are bad at it. Some of them are injuries. The Buccaneers being this bad largely because of injuries. The forty nine Ers, I'm not sure I'm going to give them that big of a pass. They actually kind of have their group back. They're one of the worst running teams. The Cardinals are one of the worst running teams in the league. And then if you look at the teams that go heaviest twelve personnel. Everyone loves talking about twelve personnel, the extra tight end on the field, and it's up.

00:08:54
Speaker 2: A few percentage points.

00:08:55
Speaker 1: If you look at the teams that are the heaviest, they're almost uniformly the worst running teams in the league right now, which I find interesting. So the Browns are in that mix, the Bears are in that mix, the Cardinals, the Ravens are in that mix. The Packers are surprisingly bad running team. They're not as much twelve I don't think that the Chiefs are another team. Like to me, I'm just grouping all these teams together and curious what you think about. Like some of the teams specifically and why these running games aren't working.

00:09:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, they each have their own particular challenges.

00:09:27
Speaker 3: I think something that's important to note is if you just isolate the run game as a standalone in twenty twenty five, it's really difficult to rip something away from it. If you don't bring you almost need to combine like wors success rate with play action explosiveness because they're only investing in the rung game to such a degree to hit play action explosives to make it look, smell, feel like they really intend on running the ball, and particularly in twelve, to try and get some of the mismatch stuff by getting a shall linebacker on the field. So it's like when you see the Sea Oaks run game figures the pretty poll for a team that have brought in Clint Kuba, can you expect to be a very good rushing team. But they are hitting chunk plays all over the place, specifically because they're in a formation, in a set, in a look that is telling you we want to run the ball. So as long as your investment you get the payoff in the play action game, that to me is like perfectly fine. It's if the play action game is poor and the wrong game is poor, You're in trouble. And it's not the having a good running attack alone creates the play action game, but it's do you have enough variation, enough different looks in the way you tried to run the ball. If you're to silid as we do one thing, we are a wide zone team, that's trouble. That's trouble for everyone. If you have a really varied rung game and it's just pretty poor, which is what the books have, you can at least get to the play action shots.

00:10:42
Speaker 1: So maybe the Packers would be an example of like, yeah, it's not totally clicking, and injuries are certainly a big part of that, but it is setting up like formationally what else we're doing.

00:10:53
Speaker 2: The pack is in particular, it's tough. Fine.

00:10:54
Speaker 3: Lafloor is like a demigod of my life. I love Matt Lafleur, but he he's after Sunday night, even a clock management. He's put together some pretty ropie game plans by his standards. I think if you gave him some truth serm, he would say, that's not some of my best work.

00:11:10
Speaker 2: The game plan against.

00:11:11
Speaker 3: The the Browns in particular was like a Hall of Fame, bad one for him, which I'm sure he would want back. So I think there's as much as that has gone into it, Like this situational play calling is pretty poor. The game planning against the opponent as not being like, let's attack a weakness. It's like, we're just going to do what we do, and that's just never been the way he's rolled.

00:11:32
Speaker 1: Maybe a team that will benefit from the week off, yeah right now, but yeah, like I don't know, just see like just seeing like the Cardinals make no sense with a running game this bad to me. It feels like they're a little dead on arrival. If that's the case, the forty nine ers feel a little I know they're three and one, they'll figure it out if they get everyone healthy, but they feel a little dead. While we're talking Packers, I'll just throw out my second one too, which is that like the Packers didn't get a win in a two games sample against the Browns and the Cowboys, Like, I know you had them winning the Super Bowl.

00:12:08
Speaker 2: I believe.

00:12:08
Speaker 1: I think you had them winning the Super Bowl before the Michael Parsons Jakes.

00:12:12
Speaker 3: I mean, and I've done that now for like three years in Okay, so I'm just going down with the ship until it's proven correct.

00:12:18
Speaker 2: Like what how did that happen?

00:12:19
Speaker 3: Like?

00:12:19
Speaker 2: What do you think about these last two weeks?

00:12:22
Speaker 3: The last two, like I said, the Browns one being so many penalties and just a pretty poor game plan on offense against a team that can only really score ten points in a game on offense is a bad one. The Cowboys one being the clock management. They're going up against maybe the most cohesive offense in the NFL, and it shows maybe some of the concerns with the Packers defensively for the fun and joy of all the creativity on the back end and having microing those guys up front of the creativity in the in the pressure game when it's just one on one third down, who's got the best players? I still don't know if they stack up with that, And that's where I would get consumer. Okay, if they have to go into the link in the playoffs and it's third down and they've got aj Brown, what are we actually doing?

00:13:02
Speaker 2: Who do we put on Dallas?

00:13:04
Speaker 3: Gotta to figure that stuff out, So that'll be my concient but I still think the underlying profile of what they do explosive plays against good teams being able to create pressure with full So that's like the Super Bowl profile.

00:13:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not too worried. I think they would have been my Super Bowl pick. I had the Lions, and I wasn't gonna just change it. Like I'm not. I'm not worried about the Packers because of those two games. But when I was thinking, like, what was the most surprising thing that happened like that, that pretty much was it?

00:13:33
Speaker 2: Right now?

00:13:33
Speaker 1: You said something interesting there though, that the Cowboys were the most cohesive offense potentially in the NFL.

00:13:38
Speaker 2: Is that is that on your list?

00:13:39
Speaker 3: No? Can we talk about that too, Like my guy Clayton Adams goes in, they ultimately have the best run game in football. You go look at the Codinals run games not looking so pretty.

00:13:49
Speaker 1: So you say cohesive like you're talking about the marriage of the passing game and the running game, because I've talked a lot about how just watching Dak I don't know if you like, I think.

00:14:01
Speaker 2: He's been the best quarterback in the league this year.

00:14:03
Speaker 1: If I had to choose one, it's tough to choose, like to not choose Josh Allen. So whatever, you're just picking, like two amazing quarterbacks. But that's I love watching the style of that Dak plays like. But we haven't talked a lot about the running game, Like what have you seen in terms of the running game and how that works with.

00:14:20
Speaker 2: The passing game?

00:14:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's they do everything and they were not a very good gap oriented base run team basically ever since Dax being that, it's always been zone and kicking and going and stretching the field and then he would boot out then and then when Dak's legs started to go and he stopped using the legs, it was no longer even effective. No one respected the boots out to the now, they've got Clayton Adams, as we mentioned, who is the go to guy for like you want to build a power spread system at downhill running attack system. He's the one guy in the league right now and has been honestly for three full seasons. And you see the impact on the Cardinals when he left. The thing I just love about them is there's a rhythm to create off the one you just feel in your bones when it's like this thing rolling down a hill where it's like they just feel like a freight train. The rhythm they have in and out of the huddle, bouncing between the wrong game to play action. How it all ties together to Duck, you know, drop back game from an assented to Duck seeing the field and spreading it around. They've been able to marry up like him wanting to be paid to Monning with him accepting like, well, there has to be some movement emotion in this offense pre snap, which he's just never really allowed since kellam Moole left.

00:15:29
Speaker 2: I don't think people.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: And I would include myself in this, have really wrapped their minds around the fact that they just put up forty on the defense going into the week that I would have said was the best defense in the league. With Cavanti Turpin as their number two receiver, Gavante Williams who's looked great but as their number one running back, and massive injuries on the offensive line, like missing two of their guys in the interior and benching they're left tackle during that game. It's kind of a coaching masterpiece, and I'm loving it because I was. I was kind of high, not high, but I thought Brian Schottenheimer could be a better head coach than he was a coordinator, and the Adams higher and the fact that he's empowering him that I think that was the worry in Dallas was like are they going to let him.

00:16:17
Speaker 2: Do this running game?

00:16:19
Speaker 1: And I guess the answer is yes, based on like the training camp I saw. It was the biggest mismatch in any training camp possible was the Cowboys offense versus the Cowboys defense every day. I think it just gave them so much confidence after that month that no one.

00:16:32
Speaker 3: Could tell them anything were moving to go for the Lions defense. Being this good this fests it asks me a little bit shook because I thought they would be really good by like week eighteen and around into foam for the playoffs, and it surprises me that they've been able to get up to speed this quickly.

00:16:49
Speaker 2: So what about them?

00:16:51
Speaker 1: Because there's not like a secondary pass rusher really other than Aiden Hudgins, And so what are they doing that makes it work?

00:16:58
Speaker 3: I mean, Sheffood, to his credit, has basically said, now, I love when coaches do this, like they've been waiting in the sidelines and the wings for like work on their philosophy and tinkering away. Then they get put in the big boy chair and it's like I'm gonna do everything I think the old guy was doing wrong. I'm going to throw everything Aaron Glenn did for the most part and try and build my own style.

00:17:16
Speaker 2: And that's where I thought it would take.

00:17:17
Speaker 3: Some time to be like this push pull tension between we know what's successful, we've run it for years, and then Shepper comes in and says, what we were doing previously was pretty old fashioned, pretty outdated. You see it now with the Jets, and it doesn't look so pretty when you don't have Aiden Hutchinson up from We got to be more of a pressure based team. We have the blitz on earlier downs and he's brought them. If you go and look at the best teams over the past three seasons defensively, they all have kind of these trigger points in terms of like early down blitz rates, sim pressure rate, format pressure rate. They're above the threshold for all of those best groups in the league to get those pieces to fit into that right to wait, they have obviously a crazy amount of talent. I just thought that would take a lot of time before they could figure it out. And even in Week one, it was pure ego coaching from Sheppy's dropping Hutchinson on third down and it's like, Okay, this guy's a little over skis, it's a little bit too philosophy over the players. And immediately it just course corrected and he's like, Okay, some of the stuff I did was wrong.

00:18:11
Speaker 2: Let's go play football.

00:18:12
Speaker 1: So you said, like a ridiculous amount of talent? What what Brian Branch stands out obviously, and Hutchinson is just like premier players, what are you?

00:18:20
Speaker 2: What are you seeing about? Like how they're using talent.

00:18:23
Speaker 3: Kirby as well McNeil coming back the Lamar game plan, when we do like game plans of the year, which you probably wouldn't do, but I certainly would do set at home.

00:18:35
Speaker 1: It is my goal if anyone from my heart is listening, like I've been wanting to hire.

00:18:38
Speaker 2: Ali Connelly for a while, and then we would do game plans of the year.

00:18:42
Speaker 3: If you had told me off the week one when I saw Kelvin Sheppard's game plan, which was all about Kelvin Sheppard, which I accept and he's really articulate and I think he's a fabulous coach, but it was all about look at me.

00:18:53
Speaker 2: It was a look at meat plan.

00:18:54
Speaker 3: If you told me a few weeks later, he would go against Top Monker and Lamar Jackson and undressed them.

00:18:58
Speaker 2: How would it be flawed?

00:19:00
Speaker 1: Do you remember where you were when Calvin Sheppard was traded for Jerry Hughes one for one and I don't remember, no, and like it was kind of like we don't want it was kind of just like a mistake trade, like whoops, we blew it.

00:19:14
Speaker 2: And then Jerry.

00:19:15
Speaker 1: Hughes went on to have like one of the most underrated careers ever. And I bring this up roughly once a month for some reason on this show.

00:19:29
Speaker 2: Give me another surprise. I'm going back to you. The Seahawks offense.

00:19:35
Speaker 3: Okay, it was one of those ones where I could understand the rationale of every individual move if you isolated each move. And then when we got to the preseason, I sat down, I looked at the death shot. I was like, they looked like there was a quarterback and the receiving Collux was I'm not sure the line is improved. And then when you start seeing them play the games, you see how every piece slots in together and everything amplifies one another, particularly I think with the receip even call Smith and Jig but go into a whole different level. But them having kind of a security blanket middle of the field. Guy in Cooper cub Holton being the deep threat. What they're doing with the tight ends to kind of play underneath than in Jig was just your three level. We found a superstar type guy. And then Donald is just playing unconscious conscious football.

00:20:18
Speaker 1: Talk to me more about Donald, because I do get the feeling. I think he's playing even better than he was playing in Minnesota. He's doing the easy stuff, but he's he's making a lot of like tough throws under pressure. He does seem more calm when when he's under pressure this year.

00:20:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does. Every single throw is effectively in rhythm.

00:20:40
Speaker 3: And then the one or two times a game that he's not on rhythm, he's making Matthew Stafford throws and there's not a single throw he doesn't believe like I can rip it down the field. There's a there's a great shot in the last game where it's double anything off play action is out the hand immediately and there's guy's at double coved and you can see him thinking, if I just put it on someone's face, musk, I can split the bull coverage and it's like okay, Buddy sum Donald and he rips it and you can do it.

00:21:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. We were at dinner the other night with our friend Henry Hodgson and a couple of the people from the NFL office.

00:21:14
Speaker 2: They were like, what, what's the most surprising thing? Give me the two minute recap of this season? So where I couldn't think of anything. The only thing I could think of was.

00:21:19
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know, Like I don't know if two are the good teams. Like there's like ten pretty good teams, but I don't I don't think right now, I don't know if there's this big separation. But in my head, like the Seahawks are as good as any team in the NFL right now. And then I saw this week after that that they were number one in DVA at least for now, and I was like, yeah, that kind of checks out to me. They kind of do everything well. Yeah, if I'm afraid that Sam d I'm gonna like forget Nick Benito. I'm gonna be wearing my anti Sam Donald bias, like in Santa Clara in February.

00:21:54
Speaker 3: At this rate, my only consume with them is some of the Rung Games stuff. It is way more very everything you would ever imagine with Clink Kuby, like the first week was basically his dad's coal sheet plastered Uncle the Seahawks, like he picked up the wrong copy for the game day and I was like, uh oh. And then I was like, okay, that is gonna run the Kuback offense. It looked pretty good. Then everyone else in the defensive side will say, let's go call Waite Phillips, get his old plans, and we'll beat the sun, you know, over the head that way. And all of a sudden, now they've got this really varied rushing attack. It's not all that effective. It does trigger some of the play action stuff. I do have a fear that they'll just revert into themselves and be like, the best thing we can do is just give the ball to Kenneth Walker and give him a chance to you know, plant and cook and go, and just Donald is on such a heater cannot sustain. But I do think they have the best defense top the bomb in the NFL. Depth coaching talent. I just think that will be the best group by the end of the season. And if they don't need Donald to play at this kind of level to go and win multiple playoff games, right.

00:22:48
Speaker 1: I think the game we're gonna call together on Talk Sport. Everyone should check it out. It'll be me and Ali and Will Gavin is a reminder how difficult it is to build around defense in the NFL.

00:23:01
Speaker 2: But the Seahawks are the perfect way to do it.

00:23:04
Speaker 1: They have a really efficient and good offense to support that defense, like Darnold doesn't have to do everything, and they have.

00:23:12
Speaker 2: An awesome special teams unit.

00:23:14
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's going to continue all year, but they've probably been the best special teams unit led by Jay Harbaugh, which leads me to my last surprise. This is more of a take than I'm just going to throw by you and see what you think. Like, is John Harbas still a good NFL head coach.

00:23:28
Speaker 3: The thing that I don't like about the national conversation about John Habball is they just bundle him in as, Oh, he's special teams guy CEO. Yeah, he's kind of fraudulent. He sits in on every single defensive staff meeting. He builds the game plan on defense. The defense is an abomination, and it's not the first time it's fall off the cliff. Last season, the communication system was an absolute mess. He had to call DMPs and be like, can you figure out how to get plays to communicate for us? Like that's what they drafted him in to do, essentially, and no one ever criticized him for it. And it's like, Boh, he's not in charge of that, He's just the head coach. Like no, he sits in every meeting his game plan and it's falling apart two years in a row.

00:24:03
Speaker 2: I think he does.

00:24:04
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, the head coach ultimately deserves responsibility for for everything. But yes, he's done the hiring. He's he has a big hand in that. I think he's an intimidating guy and people like that come across him or are a little afraid of him in a way that they're not of other NFL coaches. Was just interesting because he's not like a like a burly, huge form of player. But there's just it's always been on my raidar. There's something drill, suge and vibe. There's something under the surface there that they don't really have fighting places to pivot now, even if they just moved on from Zachor And I imagine we will get something where an advisor comes in or we get like the long athletic piece that is.

00:24:41
Speaker 2: Quietly behind the scenes.

00:24:42
Speaker 3: Zachol was removed from some responsibilities and Pegano's taking on some more. I imagine that's where we're heading with the thing. The talent has just gone now though, with all the injuries and losing Matabuike is just brutal.

00:24:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, the game this week, they I think are missing their five highest paid players.

00:25:01
Speaker 2: I mean that's just like, what really can you do?

00:25:04
Speaker 1: They were they were on pay for the healthiest team in the league last year, and now it's like the opposite.

00:25:09
Speaker 3: You can lose the talent and say, way, not as talent as we should be. You can get lined up, you can communicate, that's on the stuff.

00:25:16
Speaker 1: Okay, we're gonna do this game. We might have let's let's talk. We only have a couple of minutes left. But like I mentioned, these two defenses. I have now drilled down a little bit watching the Browns my beloved aiden Huntington from two lane looking good two side player. Like, one thing I thought about this year is how because you can see it on the Dallas defense and you can see it on the Green Bay defense, that I may be underrated. Was just I shouldn't have the multiplying effect of a truly great one.

00:25:49
Speaker 2: Great one and.

00:25:52
Speaker 1: Watching Malik Collins play the best football of his life and looking at this entire defensive line playing well around Miles Garrett and this defense, like what what have you seen out of the Browns defenses? Isaiah mcguireth too, I think he kind of gets bundled in It is like, well, Miles is great, so that helps him out. No, he in his own right is a really effective good play. They just have the great one and then they've got three really good plays beside him, which is why they just dominating everyone. And that's probably the most simplistic structurally defensive the league in an era of everyone wants to describe disguise and be creative and the coaches get all applaudeds for that.

00:26:23
Speaker 3: It's just four guys up front mauling everyone over and over again.

00:26:27
Speaker 2: And Alex Right is one of them. Like that watching.

00:26:32
Speaker 1: The film and you just love to see it because this team is not great, but Miles Garrett is playing with just an energy that is insane. It just feels like like there's not a play. And this was against the Lions, who have a good offensive line. There's there's not a play that like he doesn't impact that Like I could find maybe like four in an entire.

00:26:54
Speaker 2: Game, which is which is just crazy.

00:26:56
Speaker 1: And the energy he has, like you can run away from him, but he tracks it on the back side. It's I'm very excited to just go watch him live, even even if people like aren't thrilled with the lowest over under in any NFL game this year for Vikings Browns, and.

00:27:12
Speaker 3: If he's not impacting the pocket on the play, he impacts the play calling. They face the most screens of any team of the last two seasons because people like, let's just get the ball out as quick as possible, lift the play another down, and not have him affect things that way. It's just fun to see a defense base a we declare, these four guys are coming, let's see if you can deal with it, and all four guys are really good. It's no longer just that Miles is sensational. It's like they've got a lot of talent there and they roll through. I mean, they've run about seven deep at this point. Mason Graham's the first round pick, and he's in the rotation more than he is like the most impactful.

00:27:45
Speaker 2: One on one player, just so deep. I can't wait to watch.

00:27:49
Speaker 1: Him if we had if we had more time, I would talk about how much Mason Graham was on the ground in that Lions game.

00:27:55
Speaker 2: But I'm trying to be nice.

00:27:57
Speaker 1: The closer we get to this game, I think maybe the Browns are actually gonna win, because how do you think, okay, that line versus the Browns offensive The Vikings upfront versus the Browns offensive line is such a mismatch, and Dylan Gabriel's the quarterback, And then on the flip side, I think it's even a bigger mess match with how banged up the Vikings are, and it's going against Carson Wentz, who's I think been okay actually the last couple of weeks on the Carson Wentz scale. But he's gonna freak out certainly a handful of snaps like which quarterback.

00:28:28
Speaker 2: Do you think will could handle it better?

00:28:31
Speaker 3: That's a tricky one. It's just so unknown with Dylan Gabriel. I actually think it will be good for Dylan Gabriel, as still as this sounds full of the Browns, for him to have a game where he looks really lost and confused and is a bit in over his head.

00:28:42
Speaker 2: I think that will actually work well. From long time.

00:28:44
Speaker 3: I'm reminded of when Jordan Love first came into a game against the Chiefs. If you remember that one his SPACs just blew him apaw. He did not know what was happening in the NFL, and so Love went away and said, I'm dedicating my life to becoming the best guy pick up the blitz in pro football.

00:28:58
Speaker 2: And he actually did it when he came up to face the Eagles. He torched them.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he had like a year to do that, like Gabriel's is going to have to start.

00:29:04
Speaker 3: He did. But I think, you know this idea of like saving a guy for the right defense, to right approach, like go and see the most difficult thing, the most complex thing, up front and learn how hard this is, so when you face an easy one, it's going to feel really easy.

00:29:16
Speaker 2: And then I think, just get.

00:29:18
Speaker 3: Into big personnel and the same way the Steelers tried to do and say you put your big bodies on the field, we'll put ours on. He can move a little bit in a way that Flacco could not. Wentz want me is horrifying. He's maybe the worst guy to throw out there if there's just a foreman and go a rush because he just panics anyway.

00:29:34
Speaker 2: So if he's panicking and.

00:29:36
Speaker 3: There's seven guys back there that this could be two four five turnover game.

00:29:41
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be ugly fun.

00:29:43
Speaker 1: There's some games that are so ugly they become beautiful and that's the game we are going to call on Sunday. Yes, it'll be the Will Gavin of football games. Thank you Ali again everyone check out the read optional. Was really glad that we could squeeze in this extra show.

00:30:03
Speaker 2: It's been a great week and.

00:30:04
Speaker 1: A half over in Ireland and now the UK.

00:30:10
Speaker 2: We have one more show to go.

00:30:12
Speaker 1: We will be doing our Sunday night recap in the Talk Sports studios.

00:30:16
Speaker 2: I will be with Will and Allie.

00:30:18
Speaker 1: We will see you Sunday night.