Week 15's biggest games: Bills-Lions, Eagles on slop watch, Bucs-Chargers hoss fight
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On this episode of Football 301, Charles McDonald joins me to preview Week 15. Really, really fun slate of games this week. We deep dive into five of them. One of them is a slop watch, kind of a quasi slop watch, we'll call it. The other one is a nice hoss fight. We could have named all these hoss fights. We got some great games. Get a mailbag question in at the end. Really fun show. See you guys in a sec. No offense, but your brain is a terrible place to keep your big idea. It belongs in the world, but you know that already.

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Welcome back to Football 301. I am your host, Nate Tice. Week 15 today, we have a bunch of deep dives. There's some really fun games with actual playoff significance, playoff impact going on in Week 15, as it should be with a month to go in the season. To help me preview these games, to deep dive into five of these matchups, is my guy, Charles McDonald. How you doing today, Chuck? I'm doing all right. I'm cold. I'm tired. Found out last night.

Last night, through a raucous windstorm, I guess, in New York, that there's a draft in my apartment. So it was very, very cold last night. Very, very cold. Yeah, and like I automatically like I sleep with the fan on as default. So, you know, when I woke up, I could almost see my breath. So.

Other than that, I'm all right. I'm all right. Are you a slippers guy? I have recently become a house shoes guy because, you know, my body's just kind of mangled and my feet and my back hurt. So, you know, but actually good life improvement, you know, day-to-day maintenance improvement. So I'm doing all right. But luckily we have a lot of good games to watch to keep my mind off my freezing apartment.

Much better than maybe last week where we were like, yeah, let's just talk about all of them because we can't really narrow down any of these. So we were a little communistic about looking at the games last week. But this week, more capitalistic. It's perfect. This is how it should be. And really, though, we're looking at

I think all the games that we're looking at are afternoon or night games. None of the morning slights. So really, if you want to sleep in, if you don't want to check out that red zone, I'm kidding. Watch all the games. It's a lot of fun. See NFL. We only got four more weeks of the regular season. Let's enjoy these weeks. But no, we're looking at a bunch of the afternoon games. Going to look at that Sunday night football game. Also, we had some a little bit of news. I just want to see if you have a little thought.

Maybe just a, you know, a little Rorschach test on this. Bill Belichick now hired as the head coach of North Carolina. Yeah.

Any thoughts? I'm just curious what you think about this, Charles. The first thought I had about Bill Belichick was the famous Twitter thread from the guy named Solomon that starts off, when you get out here, you're not going to want to be out here, okay? Because... You think you want to be out here. You think you want to be out here, but you don't want to be out here. You know, one of the funniest moments of last year's college football season was...

James Madison University go to Chapel Hill on the road and score 53 points in the first half of a 70 to 50 win over the Tar Heels. UNC has the worst ranked recruiting class in the ACC. They're 81st nationally according to on

on three or one, however you pronounce it. What was Mac doing? Mac was getting ready to get fired, you know? No, because after the JMU game, they were like, no, Mac, you can't come back. And then they were like, ah, maybe you can finish the season. Then, you know, everyone's kind of in flux like that. So they have nine commits. Eight of them are signed. One of them is unsigned, which is a four-star quarterback. So you're really going to need that. So I guess between what, now and...

the end of April, let's call it, Bill has to get like, what, 30 guys to come commit to UNC? And then, what I want to see is, this is obviously, we've talked about a bunch, anyone who covers the draft knows that

these offenses are not as sophisticated as what you see on Sunday. So the first time that Bill plays like Clemson and they have like four passing plays, but they have four stars and five stars compared to your three stars. I just want to see how bad he loses it. Because yeah, you can call all the pattern matching and we've got all our bases covered and some guy who's

runs like a 10-4 and the 100 meter dash going right past your safety for a touchdown it doesn't matter at all so bill i i really just want to know how he's going to cope with all that because they're going to do a whole lot of losing this year i would imagine it's a lot it's a thought experiment that it's just like all right they're obviously going to have some schematic advantages especially on defense but then also playing like an art bryles offense or the the wake forest long

RPOs and the unbalanced formations that happens in college that are, they are anti-football. If you're, if you're asking me, they shouldn't be allowed, but they are legal in college. That is going to be interesting. It doesn't. Yeah. That's the, that's really, it's just a curiosity for me. I, it's been pretty funny to watch him, you know, Belichick and how the, all the stories that came out today and saying like, Oh no, this is an FU to the NFL from Belichick and his group. And it's like,

F you. I mean, you didn't get any calls. You really think he's jumping back to college by choice? That was his first take on it? I don't know. But no, I'm really just curious. I think it's just that college football is just such a wild place right now that what these teams are trying to do to make themselves unique, interesting, or good, like this is one of them. You have Deion, the Colorado. You see a bunch of kind of coaches there, like,

coordinators right now. Dirk Cutter is the offense coordinator for the Boise State and is doing well there actually. Just give it to Jenty and we're good. But yeah, Belichick, North Carolina with his group. Mike Lombardi is already GM, already out there doing his thing. So this is going to be an interesting little path here. But I was curious. I started to look at the teams that Belichick could maybe end up with in the NFL and the Jags felt like the easiest one to me or the one I can make the easiest argument for because it's like, you know,

Shad Khan being kind of not knowing anything, but going like, hey, these people tell me Belichick's pretty good. Maybe we should hire him. But it kind of seemed maybe the doors, you know, maybe not as many seats as he thought were available. So interesting thing in football. He only had one interview last year. So the fact that he wouldn't get any after not coaching for years, not that surprising. And that was used as like a.

A way to like find the rat in the building to like whoever leaked that news. And then, yeah, yeah. Then we saw some some some team or some team members of the Falcons also in their positions changed after the news got leaked, which told me a lot about what happened there. So, yeah, that's actually a pretty good one. But enough Belichick.

He's in, well, we'll talk about college down the road. We got the playoffs coming up, but let's get into week 15. A really fun slate of games. That's why we, there's even five one things. We're going full on deep dives for this game. So let's start with our first deep dive. Okay. Okay.

This just keeps going. U-571 there. Yeah. U-301 here on this show. Yeah. We've got a bunch of U-boats here. But yeah, we're going to start. I was about to say something terrible about the tragic accident that happened last summer in the submarine. Oh, the Titan? Well, I didn't say it. I didn't say it. So...

No, these teams actually, you know, both of these teams actually use the proper equipment and go through the actual licensing and everything you're supposed to do when you try to dive to see the Titanic. But anyways, we got the Bills. And the Lions. Let's say bring Pranay Sewell with you when you're trying to dive. That's what the Lions are doing. They're just sink and sink and sink. At the Lions, Lions are two and a half point favorites. So, you know, that's kind of pretty close here. Lions...

Pulled off some tough wins, especially with what, like 40 guys on injured reserve last week, which is pretty fun. I actually watched them battle it out and actually you don't really feel it, which is saying something for that Lions team. The Bills just coming off a brouhaha against the Rams. Just an absolutely so much fun game. We spent like 20 minutes breaking that one down. But.

Really fun one here against two of the best teams in the NFL, even with the Lions facing some injuries, which will be really, really interesting to watch in this game. But we'll start with when the Bills have the ball against this Lions defense. Charles, what are some of the things that you're checking out? Some of the things you're focusing on to side the ball? This is a really funny matchup thing for the Lions defense because, I mean, the name of the game with them is we're running man coverage. Like we're

already my coverage and i i thought that it was funny because i was looking at like their uh their splits basically like what they're what they run for coverage wise uh they're 32nd in zone coverage rate first in man coverage rate uh coincidentally they're playing an offense that is used to seeing the exact opposite the bills have seen the 32nd uh like the lowest man coverage rate in the league and the highest zone coverage rate in the league so this is like

you're going polar opposites here. And it's obvious why teams don't want to play man coverage against Josh Allen, because if you turn your back to him, he's just going to run. And he's a guy that can easily run for a hundred yards in a game if you

you will give them the opportunity to do so. So I just want to see really what are the tendency breakers that the Lions will try to use just to save themselves because obviously you don't – this is a good defense. You don't want to – even as they've gotten banged up, you don't just want to abandon like totally what you've gotten here. And you've played three months of good defense by playing majority man coverage, blitzing – I mean –

somewhat kind of keeping it simple and just letting your, your quarterbacks be good players. But, but,

I just find it hard to believe that that is a winning plan for this week. And I do think that if McNeil plays, they kind of have a chance to match up against the run. He practiced today. But it doesn't matter if you're just going to let Josh Allen break your back on scrambles over and over and over again because we know that he's capable of doing the hero ball stuff. He's capable of putting the entire offense on his back and go out and score like 30 points. So I think that that

you know, that interaction there and how the Lions decided to call their defense would be really interesting throughout the game. Yeah, that's kind of what I was looking at too was it –

especially last week when, you know, that bills Rams game for both sides was like, all right, they play in man or zone. The bills against when they played the Texans was still seemed like one of the wonkiest games of the year. Remember how much Josh Allen kind of struggled against man. Like they just beat up. I would say Josh Allen did. I would say that the Texans DBs really snuffed out the bills receivers in that game and really just stomped them out of the game. And Keanu Coleman made a mistake in the second half. They came along a little bit, but I, I,

I kind of came across the same kind of notes. Allen's only taken one sack against man coverage this season. He's scrambled eight times, and he averages almost 10 yards a pop on those scrambles. That's why you don't want to play man coverage against Josh Allen. Josh Allen and Lamar are kind of the guys that no one plays man coverage against because they're just like, screw that. We can play perfect defense. Somebody can get home or get close to getting home and be a free runner, and they just run around them, get a first down. I'm curious, too.

Yeah, so I looked at the kind of the injury report. DJ Reader sat out Wednesday, but practiced on Thursday, which is huge. Levi Onzerike had a limited practice. So they had some, you know, Josh Paschall set the same limited practice. So, OK, the reinforcements are coming, or at least they're not as...

depleted as maybe you would think because they have like freaking 18 guys on injured reserve right now. It's insane. I think 18 defensive players had either injured reserve or injury designation going into this week, which is

So again, entire team is a JV squad. The I'm just curious, too, is the bills go heavy because this is a strength on strength thing, too, for them is the bills run that jumbo personnel more than anybody. They are when they get to 12 and 13, which is two or more tight ends, I should say, or an extra offensive lineman. Third and success rate. First, an explosive play rate. Second, an EPA per play. Good running. Good passing. They do this at a large chunk of their snaps.

And Bills, like I said, have the highest rate of just jumbo, which is six-offense alignment. The other quirk of this Lions defense, outside they play a bunch of man, is on early downs, they stay big. They just keep their big boys out there. Even with the injuries, they've been doing the same thing.

Well, I looked at the same personnel groupings against this Lions defense just to see how they've been up this whole year. First in EPA per play allowed. First in EPA per drop back. And third in success rate. True strength on strength when these teams want to go big. And I think that's going to be fun because they both want to do it. So is it going to be like who blinks? Like you said, is there a change up that they throw out there? The other thing, too, is mentioning Josh Allen running.

NextGenStats pointed this out on one of their insights. He's at the lowest amount of design runs this year. You know, scrambles are one thing. That's pass play running. And the design runs are actually like read plays and all that. Lowest of his career, 1.3 design runs per game.

Time to dust off the old nuke button in this game. You know, just go, okay, let's call about three or four of these. Let's get it going because Anthony Richardson got this defense with it a little bit. Baker Mayfield had a quarterback draw touchdown against this defense. Kyle Murray had a couple nice runs on design runs against this defense. So maybe that's the little change up that the Bills try to throw their way. I think it's going to be a...

a big Amari Cooper game against man coverage or whoever they decide is the corner that they want to attack. Keanu Coleman's back. Khalil Shakir might be a big game for him. You have Donald Kinkade against Brian Branch, which is a fun matchup. So this is just a really fun kind of strength on strength thing here as long as the lines are healthy-ish.

That would kind of make it that way, too. And do they try to blitz him? I mean, Allen torches the blitz. He's done that his whole career. He's just consistently good against the blitz. And teams don't really want to do it. He's second in EPA per dropback against the blitz. And he tries to gash you. And it's pretty funny, too, talking about that scramble stuff. Five scrambles against the blitz.

four of them went for first downs. So it's like, it's, it's, it's so must be so frustrating for defenses to go against this guy. I mean, unless you just outscore them like the Rams did, because it's like, all right, try this.

All right. Well, try this. He just ran by us. OK, OK. No, no. We're going to squat on everything. And he chucks it over the top and beats you over the top. So, yep. Josh Allen is always going to be a conundrum. But I do think that maybe targeting Murray Cooper a little bit against all this man coverage. Murray's got a 35 percent target share against man coverage this year. One out of three balls goes to him when they play in man coverage or defenses play in man coverage. So.

Maybe check him out. That's why they went and acquired him. Yeah, that was I would say that's probably the main reason why he's here. You know, someone win. Someone's got to win here. Someone has to win. Yeah, it's either Keon Coleman back shoulders, you know, Shakir in the middle. I think Kincaid might get snuffed out a little bit. You know, Brian Branch is really good.

So I don't know. I don't know if this is a cocaine game, but we'll see maybe on early downs. Other side, though, we got the Lions offense, which is at the top or near the top in every metric you look at going. It's a Bill's defense that had been playing really good ish.

And then now it's kind of dropped off a little bit until they got absolutely shellacked last week against the Rams. When you're checking out this side of the ball, Charles, what are some of the stuff you're looking at? Well, I started there because I just looked at like the last four games the Bills have played. So they had the they had to buy some of this like the last five weeks.

of Bill's defense. And they're 25th in points per drive, 25th in EPA per play, 31st in pressure rate, 32nd in success rate, dropback success rate, first downs and touchdowns per play, third down conversion rate, and they're 30th in third and short conversion rate, giving up 73.7% of all third and short attempts over their last four games. And I was like, wait, hold on. This is even worse than I thought. Right. Yeah.

But I was like, wait, is that just skewed by the Rams game? So I cut it off, and no, it wasn't. They really are like the worst defensive football, even if you pull the Rams game out of it. Like, they're near the bottom for everything. Because then you go back to the Colts game that they played against Joe Flacco, and they got turnovers, but the Colts had a really high success rate in that game, and they were actually moving the ball outside of Joe Flacco crapping down his legs. So the only real spot that...

have been good at is turnovers. They're second in turnovers per drive. Outside of that, they're getting absolutely bludgeoned. And then when you play a game like the Rams and you don't get any turnovers, that's what it looks like. You give up 44 points. So I was like, well, maybe there's an area where...

They don't suck. There's an area where they don't just get killed by the Lions in this situation because the recent trends would show, oh my God, the Lions are about to score 50 points here and it doesn't matter what Josh Allen does. So they kind of run the opposite defense from what the Lions do. Their ninth highest zone coverage rate, 24th man coverage rate. They don't blitz all that much. So I started looking through just like any little slivers of optimism I could find. Jared Goff.

against cover two, 18th in EPA per dropback, 25th in sack rate. The Bills run the eighth highest cover to rate in the league. So maybe that's an option for them. But...

You can look up the run. You can look up, like, the running stats for two— Crush them, right? Yes, for two high coverages. The Lions are second in yards per carry, six yards per carry, first in a paper rush, third in rushing success rate, and 20% of the runs are going for 10 yards or more, and they're third in yards before contact against two high coverages at almost three yards before contact in two high coverages. Wow.

I don't know, man. I don't know. What's the answer here? You just got to hope that golf just kind of has one of those golf games where...

Too much is going. Maybe they can't run the ball, but I have no reason to believe that they won't be able to just get under center and just pound the rock like they have been able to every week, which is, again, what makes this offense so hard to stop like we talked about. You can have all different types of defenses. They've played Brian Flores are going to play this week. They've mowed them all down, so I don't know. I really don't know what to do here because the recent trend suggests that this is going to be an ugly game for Buffalo's defense.

They don't have like those easy answers or natural answers is the term we always come up with. But they're like, oh, yeah, they just do this. They're fine. I mean, even in the game against the Rams, and we talked about this on Sunday night, was they were getting in zone. Stafford was gashing them. And then in the second half, they're like, okay, we got to run man. But then they have like backup corners in trying to keep up with Pukunuku and Cooper Cup and stuff. And it's just like, again, it's like.

That's what these really good offenses do. Like, all right, you want to do this against us? We'll just do this. And such a great point about the running the ball because Ben Johnson has no qualms. We're just pounding it over and over and over. If you're going to be getting those soft boxes. So, I mean, I even wrote, I was like, I think this could be a dagger fest for the Lions because the same thing with that cover two point.

They love running dagger and dagger is just a seam, you know, straight run and a big dig behind it. They love that concept. Golf's really good at throwing it. They love calling it. So look for that. I even was looking up the same stuff. I was like, all right, Stafford's the best QB in the league and zone golf is worse, but he's still top 10.

It wasn't like a big drop off where you're like, oh yeah, just run zone. He's 24th or something like that. But I think that's going to be a St. Brown heavy game. But it makes sense. I like looking at the target share versus zone versus man, all that stuff. And the guy that gets the most targets against zone and cover two for the Lions is David Montgomery.

because everything becomes against cover two is the gashes on the field are underneath, which is running the ball or checking it down or digs. So that's what I mean. I think it's just going to be daggers of St. Brown and checking it down to Montgomery and Jameer Gibbs, and that's going to be their pass game for this game. And I think it's going to be fine with them. And then also the Bills run nickel all the time. I mean, Teron Johnson is a great player, and him against St. Brown is going to be a lot of fun. But you're going against the Lions, who have –

They're going to just get big, just pound it on you. You know, it's just every, every like you, I can really find a thread I can pull out for the bills. Like this is this what the lines do. This is just such a tough matchup for them. So I think there's going to be some, there's going to be some real points in this game. I'm really excited for this one. The bills had a, have a virtual practice today, apparently because of weather going on in Buffalo. That was, that's also something to kind of note that,

And Goff doesn't have to throw in the snow, so that's also huge for him because he just gets to play every game indoors. But any predictions for this game? Like I said, the spread is the Lions are two and a half point favorites. Is this in Buffalo?

No, this is in Detroit. Oh, okay, okay. I got a little confused with the snow part. Oh, and I say he doesn't have to throw in the snow. Yeah, yeah. I thought you meant like, oh, he's going to run the ball and be playing. Like, yeah, I would too. If we're playing in the snow. Again, the Lions kind of have everything you need. Yeah. I think Lions by two and a half sounds right.

I think Josh Allen does a lot to keep them in this game. I think it goes back and forth, but you know, it's like a good old line is like the universal solvent, man. If we can just get under center and just run the ball, see ya. So I think that's what carries them at the end.

And that's the thing is like the bills can do it too. It's just that I don't think their defense can stick for four quarters, like for 60 plays. Like I think this game is going to be closer in the first half and then maybe the Lions pull away. I'm with you. I think it's a close win by the Lions. But I do think there's going to be some points. I think there's going to be some fun running the ball. But I think the Lions pull ahead at the end. All right. We are going to take our first break and then we'll come back.

with our Haas fight of the week and our slop watch, kind of, sort of. You know where your business would be without you. Imagine where it could go with more of you. Well, with Wix, you can create a website with more of your vision, your voice, your expertise. Wix gives you the freedom to truly own your brand and do it on your own with full customization and advanced AI tools that help turn your ideas into reality.

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Or did he just forget my name? Has he ever said my name? But you always know exactly where you stand with the Sport Clips app that shows you the shortest wait and the haircut tracker that tracks your real-time wait time down to the minute. Uh, my name's Josh. The Sport Clips app. It's a game changer. We are back. Next game up is our Hoss Fight of the Week. It's Bucs at Charters.

That's my favorite one. That was good. That's my favorite one. I like that one a lot. Because you said it reminded you of that TikTok, right? Yeah. Where you going? Where you going? Gritty!

So this is our hot spot of the week. We have the Bucs at Chargers. Chargers are three-point favorites. I mean, we got two playoff teams here the season we're going to end today. And, you know, interesting game here. We'll start with, let's say, let's say the Bucs have the ball. Chargers are on defense. What do you got for me, Charles? What are you watching on that side of the ball? I'm going to start with the Bucs.

Well, I think we talked about it like a month ago. This was the stretch where the Chargers defense was going to have to start playing real offenses. I think over their past four games, they played the Bengals, Ravens, Falcons, Chiefs, you know.

Those are, I know the Falcons are whatever, but still. It's a good offense. It's a good offense. It's a lot better than the schlock they were playing the first, like, nine weeks of the season. Since then, you know, they've averaged out to probably be, like, an average defense, which is not bad to me. For where you started, this was the worst defense in football last year. And for you to even be average against, like, four of the better offenses in the league, that's...

That's a pretty good start. One area that they are good at, which I thought was interesting, was their attempt at EPA per dropback in that span. But they are also 24th in EPA per rush attempt in that span. And we know Buccaneers, they're going to run the ball like that's what they're doing since Chris Godwin got hurt, since Mike Evans has been in and out.

Liam Cohen, they haven't overthought it. Okay, we don't have our receivers, but we got a really good offensive line. Tristan Wurfs is playing out of his mind. Barton's good. And all of our young running backs are playing well too. Bucky Irving's having a breakout rookie season. Rashad Weissman playing well. Sean Tucker's done well when he's got his matchups and got it in the game. So the game plan is pretty clear. And I think it's been kind of cool to see because,

On the fly, it's like you would think as the Bucs offense, we're so wide receiver centric. That's what we've been with Brady. That's what we've been recently because that's where our good players are. Those guys exit and they immediately have a counter. Okay, we're just going to run the offense through our running backs and our offensive line for the rest of time. So, yeah.

I think it's just going to be a cool little chess match because I think when you look at where the Bucs are and what the Chargers can be good at, it seems like a strength on strength because I personally love the idea of watching Dan Henley trying to just play against all the muck and the screams that the Bucs are going to throw at him because he has the athleticism to do that. Derwin James is playing well. I'm sure he'll be a part of that plan too. I think the Bucs, they're at least built –

to continue going like this. They've barely let Baker Mayfield throw the ball at all. Their first and pressure rate since Chris Godwin got hurt, they're still 18th in sack rate, which is pretty funny. First and pressure rate, 18th in sack rate. - So first pressure rate allowed, like in a good way? - Yeah, first, yeah. They've allowed the least amount of pressure. - But they're 18th? - 18th in sack rate, which Baker-- - 'Cause they throw so many frickin' screens, and so when he actually has to drop back, it's like, oh yeah, that's Baker.

Yeah. They're third in EPA per rush. They're seventh in explosive run rate, first in yards after contact. It's a great run game, man. It's so fun. They're just like, let's get our offensive line and backs out in front of people and let's mow them down. And it's working so far. The Baker Mayfield prevention plan has been a good one for Liam Collin. Just incubate them. Just incubate the Baker. Yeah, that's what you got to do. No, it's a great call to bring it up. The receivers get hurt or even when

Rashad White got hurt early in the year. And then it was the Bucky Irving and, and Sean Tucker show against the saints. I mean, that was embarrassing from the saints, but it was like, Oh wow, this is maybe a little different bucks team we're looking at. So they're running a little bit more of that pony personnel with two running backs on the field, which is a lot of fun. They do all that screen stuff.

I kind of want to make this Haas fight because I love the Graham Barton shout out going against like Puna Ford and tear tart. That's going to be a fun battle on the interior. Cody Mox playing well at right guard. Lou Getty is playing real well at right tackle like the box of the line. Like you said, it's one of the better ones in the league.

The Bucs are just facing, they have so many injuries on both sides of the ball. I mean, their injury list was, yeah, Ben Brennison did not participate in practice on Wednesday. KJ Brett did not participate. Mike Edwards safety did not participate. Mike Evans did not participate Wednesday or today. I just saw that right before we came on. Greg Gaines, limited participation.

uh, did not participate. Bucky Irving did not participate. You might miss this week. I think he is going to miss this week. Christian Izeen did not participate. Uh, co-key limited participant, J.D. Russell limited participants. Sterling Shepard did not participate. Tykee Smith limited participant. Mark, um, Antoine Winfield Jr. Did not participate. And Tristan works did not participate. Oh, I kept scrolling down. I was like,

And then I copied and pasted a little screenshot of the injury list, and I had to, like, squeeze it into my notes because it was so long. So I had to change the size of it. Holy crap. I know. They're banged up. And that's why it's kind of like you want to credit them, especially on offense, what Liam Cohen's doing. Just, like, no matter who's been in and out, it's like he's done one of the most impressive jobs. Yeah.

He's worthy of those interviews this offseason that he's going to get. He definitely has earned those. What I was looking at on this side, talking about all those screens and maybe –

the Baker incubation system that they've created over there in Tampa. It's that nobody has thrown the ball or nobody has more yards on throws of 10 or fewer air yards than Baker, which is those screens, which is underneath stuff. Third, third, most past attempts are 10 or fewer air yards this year. He has 2,100 yards on those. No one else is over 2000, which is pretty funny. Chargers.

on those. So short throws as they're defined as. Third in success rate allowed. Second lowest explosive pass rate allowed. So this defense tackles really well. They are so aware of what the other offenses want to do. So they've become one of these units. It's like, all right, how's Jesse Minter going to figure this one out? You know, like how are they, like you watch their defenders and they're really just like,

They know what they're getting. Like, you don't see them get fooled a lot. You know, maybe against, you know, the Bengals, they got hit with the double move. But again, they got hit on that because they were so aware of what the Bengals were trying to do that the Bengals got them with the double move. But man, just a really, really good and sound defense going against a sound offense that keeps finding answers in some ways. But yeah,

You can get Baker. He's going to put the ball in harm's way. He's going to make a Baker mistake. Our guy Derek Klassen had such a funny tweet where he's like, this is the funniest sack of the year. Did you see that one? I've missed that one. It was a slop blitz last week.

And the DB thuds up the running back. I want to say it was Irving. I could be wrong. It might be Rashad White. But anyways, it doesn't matter. Thud up, a little collision right there to the left of Baker. And then kind of grabs over. The DB kind of grabs over at Baker as he's trying to do his little spin move that he always does. And he kind of gets just tripped up. So it looks like the DB just like,

Gave him like a force push. Like just like force pushing. And he twirled around and just like fell off. And I was just like, oh, Baker never changed my man. No, this is just a fun scheme battle. This is going to be a fun cat and mouse game between these. How is Mitter and this defense going to get this?

Baker or try to get Baker and are they gonna snuff out all these screens and make it hard on them so they need Evans to play to like give them a real real chance but it's uh yeah it's gonna be a really fun one on that side of the ball anything on the other side of the ball um I think it's Herbert is banged up too uh he has an ankle and a thigh injury guy just keeps racking him up uh even though Jim Harbaugh did say he's the toughest quarterback

in NFL history, which is one of my favorite videos this past season. The toughest quarterback in NFL history. Did you see that video? It's my favorite. I love him. Because he said, I used to be first. And I will say that I am now second. Which is just like...

I don't know. I love it. College can have Belichick. I'll take Harbaugh all day. We'll take Harbaugh. The funniest Harbaugh video to me this year has been, I don't remember exactly which game it was, but it's pregame and he's like playing catch with the quarterbacks and Ladd McConkie and he's wearing gloves and he drops a pass and he gets so mad at himself. He's like, Darn it! Darn it! I'm like, whoa. You just pick it up and throw it back and throw another.

He loves playing catch, which is so funny. I mean, he's the same guy that brings a ball glove to baseball games. He brings a baseball glove to baseball games because he'd catch a foul ball or something. This guy loves sports. He just loves his ball sports. Yeah, I mean, if Herbert doesn't play, no, but I think he is going to play as the toughest quarterback in NFL history. Well, he didn't like the Taylor Heineke

head first slide. No. Give me a nice flashbacks there. I tweeted. I was just like anyone but Taylor Heineke and people like, oh, he's better than Easton stick. I was like, you wouldn't get it. Okay. You just wouldn't get it. You have to be there last year for the 2023 Arthur Smith offense. When Taylor Heineke absolutely played worst football to Desmond Ritter last year. And it was just, it was, it was so horrible to watch. I shared my Desmond Ritter had better stats than Bryce Young stat the other day.

Yeah. Yeah. We're not seeing Desmarais this week, actually. It looks like AOC is getting the Monday night football start. I was really excited about that. I'm not bringing that again. I know. I want a little revenge battle on Monday night. It would have been fun to watch. It would have been really funny. Yeah.

Yeah. Predictions for this game? Chargers are three-point favorites. I guess a Haas fight, too, because the Chargers are going to run the ball 100 times as well against this Bucs defense with Vita Vey and everything. So that's part of the Haas fight-ness of this game. But predictions for this game? As long as the Chargers... The Chargers, to me, they kind of remind me of a toddler who they're in the kitchen and they're learning how to use stuff for the first time. And at some point, every child is going to ask to pour their own juice for the first time, right? So you have a big cup of...

and the Chargers first and second down plays. That's you, that's the baby carrying the juice and just spilling it all over the counter. Mom, can you go clean it up? That's Justin. It says third and 10. If Justin's healthy, you can survive third and 10. He's been like a top 10 quarterback on third and long this year. Hasn't thrown an interception. That's the only way they're really getting their explosive pass in place for the most part. Then they have a chance. One of the random trends I saw was

That really alarmed me was when I looked at the past month of play for the Bucs, they had the number two defense in football the past month. And I looked and they played the Giants, Panthers, and the Raiders. And I was like, okay, that makes a whole lot of sense. So, I mean, this isn't...

too much farther off than that because this offense is kind of like those offenses except they have Justin Herbert. They waste so many drives. But I think at the end of the day, Herbert's good enough where they can just convert just enough on the drives where you're not going three and out and running straight first into a brick wall. So I'll give LA the nod here. Yeah, I think I'm feeling like a 2017...

Kind of Chargers win here. Maybe 21-17 or something like that if you want to get a cover in there. But I'm going Chargers. That is fun, though. Todd Bowles on third down against Justin Herbert's fun. Watching Vance Joseph and the Broncos against the Chargers earlier this year was a lot of fun because they were getting home because the center couldn't sort out anything for the Chargers. And then Herbert was just...

throwing haymaker after haymaker after haymaker. So it was a lot of fun. And then Ladd-McConkie. Ladd-McConkie's practiced, so that's huge too. If he's not practicing, then it's, but at least Ladd's back out there. Ladd's, by the way, just wrote up the rookies. Ladd's 10th in yards per route run among all players. He's the real deal. He's so much fun. All right. Going on to our next game.

Steelers at Eagles. And this is our slop watch warning. This is a slop watch. I like that. This is the lipstick on a pig slop watch QB matchup because Steelers Eagles is kind of like, wow, these aren't these teams like playoff teams and they actually have some units. They're actually pretty good, but

I want you to take the lead here of why this is our slop watch, Charles, because we're both thinking that this can maybe get a little messy or get a little ugly, I think, in Philadelphia. One, it's the Steelers. And that's... Permaslop. Mike Tomlin's ideal game is just...

drenching steaks in the water. You know, sloppy steaks, slopping it up. Next thing you know, we've held Lamar Jackson to 1-16 on third down and not a single person's had a good time today. But I think in this game, that...

I know when you start looking at the metrics, you start looking at even the Steelers' recent string of run defense, it looks kind of scary for them. But I don't think that they would necessarily have a whole lot of time making the picture, especially on pass defense, on pass downs, making the picture muddy for Jalen Hurts because that's...

Kind of what the mantra has always been for the Steelers. I know they're playing a lot more man this year. Maybe they have like when you stereotypically think of like a Steelers defense, which is a little scary because Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown are pretty good first man coverage. And, you know, A.J. Brown and Devontae Smith are pretty good first man coverage and getting open and making plays against defensive backs.

I think this is slop watch because, one, I think the Steelers can do enough to hamper Hertz's ability to process a field and throw the ball. And on the flip side, we can be real about this. It's not like the Steelers' offense has actually been all that good with Russell Wilson as their starter. We've been talking about this. I swear they're better. I swear they're better. And they are in some areas. They're basically like—

Maybe outside of Kansas City, they're probably the best third and long team in the league since Russ has been the quarterback. They're averaging a .57 EPA per dropback on third and long since Russ has taken over. Which is absurd. I just randomly saw this because I was looking something else up. His average air yards to sticks on third down. So like how far he pushes past the third down or the first down marker on third down is like five. So that means to say it's third and ten. That means he's throwing it...

15 yards down the field, which is not how Russ played in Denver, by the way. And the only one that had a higher mark than that was Anthony Richardson. So, yeah, which makes that one makes a lot of sense. But yeah, with Russ, it's like, okay, yeah, they're just throw those grenades up there. On 37, the Steelers have since Russell Wilson's taken over on 37 longer, the Steelers have a 30% explosive play rate, which is

by far the first in the NFL. So, first and second down, they're kind of doing the Chargers thing, right? We're running into brick walls. We're not really gaining that much. Then third down comes and...

they get some of the explosive there, which is not a great way to play football. But you kind of look at Russell Wilson's whole career and you're like, there's a lot of things here that don't really make sense in terms of conventional wisdom. And they keep popping up and they keep working. So I think that, do we know if Pickens is going to play? Because earlier in the week it seemed like he wasn't going to play. Okay, that's a huge deal. Because if he's out... Oh, I got some stats, don't you worry. Yeah.

Well, I'll let you take the floor on that because I'm sure if he's out, well, who are you supposed to be afraid of here on this offense? That's it.

That's literally my argument or not argument, but like my main points for my side here is that I was looking at this and I was like, no Pickens. How bad is this offense without George Pickens and Charles? They're very bad without George. They go from 17th in the league when Pickens is on the field and offensive success rate without Pickens. They're 31st and passing success rate. They go from 18th to 30th.

an explosive pass rate, which is the, which you is what you're getting at and which is the big thing for this offense. And this team needs is explosive pass plays. That's the formula. They go from eighth to 17th and Russ is actually second. So that this is including Justin Fields and starts, but Russ is actually second in the league and explosive pass rate among all quarterbacks. Uh,

Yeah, no. EPA per play, they go from 15 to 26. EPA per dropback, they go from 10th to 23rd. So they go from like what we've been kind of talking about, like an ugly but average offense that gets the job done to one of the worst offenses that can't really move the ball, can't really throw the ball consistently. So it's kind of like everything we're getting at, especially with Reed Blakenship is back for the Eagles, which is huge. Like, all right.

Cooper Dijon's better than any offensive skill guy for the Steelers. Quinion Mitchell's better than any offensive skill guy for the Steelers. So I'm just kind of like, all right, so who are the matchups? All right, I think we're going to see 40 tight ends for the Steelers. I think that's just going to be like almost every play. The Steelers trot out all their tight ends, 12, 13. They might do some pony personnel with Cordell Patterson because that's Arthur Smith's kind of

like bandaid like that that's his like uh what do we do i don't know throw some cordero patterson at it you know pony pony personnel um three years ago it did yeah i know i know that i think like just used him ran away as the running back the first team to actually you know i was that's what i was like really interested in the falcons like i think so it was arthur's first year

I remember just maybe no second year is year two. Yeah. Oh, wow. This actually works like that. That's cool. They're getting some stuff with Patterson out of this. Okay. But then ever since then, it's just been sad. But I just think this is interesting because the Eagles defense, they want to make it tight. They don't want to give up big plays. They want to make you be patient and run the ball and nickel and dime the passing game. That's not what the Steelers can do passing wise. And then running wise, it's interesting because, all right, if the Steelers tried out all these tight ends, they're

The Eagles have only faced 10 plays this year when the offense has been in 13, which is three tight ends, or 13 jumbo, which is, you know, they have offense alignment. The fewest amount of plays in the NFL. They've only allowed a yard per play on those, but they just, it's all been short yardage stuff. It hasn't been like first and 10. Here comes Washington and Friermuth and Pruitt and Hayward, and they're just going to pound it onto you. So,

that's kind of just the angle. I think that they will go down. The Steelers will, I don't think you have to twist Arthur Smith's arm to do it, but it just has to be perfect. Like it has to be pristine because they don't have that kind of bail out George Pickens, like, you know, Mike Williams, I guess like, you know, but it's, it's going to be an ugly side on that, especially against this Eagles Fangio defense that wants to squeeze him, make everything tight. That side of the ball is going to feel really, really tight. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the multiple tight ends is something I had written down. You know, we're still looking through all this since the lens of since Russ has gotten back. But, like, for all 12 personnel snaps...

They're eighth in EPA, ninth in EPA per play, ninth in EPA per dropback, ninth in overall success rate. The Eagles have also been really, really good against 12 personnel, like all season, been bludgeoning it. Wait, I parsed the Eagles. I know, I know. They're good at this too. They're good at this too. They're good at this too. But if there's one avenue outside of, you know, the slim pickings of third and long explosives, probably just get in there and 12 personnel and just rock fight it. Rock fight it, yeah. Yeah.

And also, like, this game could have been the Haas fight, too, because both sides, really. Jalen Carter versus Zach Frazier and Milton Williams and Mason McCormick and all those guys against this Eagles front. That would be a lot of fun. The other side of the ball is for sure a Haas fight. You got Jordan Maialata, Landon Dickerson, Cam Juergens, Kai Becton, who's playing really well, Lane Johnson going against Cam Hayward, Keanu Benton, TJ Watt, Alex Highsmith, and Nick Herbig. Like,

That's a battle. Larry Ogunjobi has a groin injury, so to monitor that one. But really for that side, I was kind of just like,

just run the ball a hundred times Eagles. Like don't overthink this. Like you, you don't want Mika against Jalen hurts. You don't want to allow Mika Fitzpatrick to do his damage, even though it's over the middle and you know, hurts isn't going to throw it that way still like you don't want them getting fooled and doing those. So I think the Eagles should just run it over and over. Like that's how you have to do it against they're big and burly, but there's avenues to run it against them. Because I think passing the ball, even though there's a lot of drama, you know,

about them throwing the ball right now. Just don't listen. I know it's hard. Don't listen to the noise. Just keep running it. Run it 45 times. So that is what this team's formula should be. Any other thoughts other than my just run the ball kind of thought? No, just run the ball. There was a stat that I had when I was looking up the Lions before contact.

too high that I thought was before contact runs against two high coverages. The Lions were third at 2.69 in terms of yards per contract on two high coverages. And the Eagles are first at 3.36 yards before contact. Before contact! So, you know, you better

bring a safety in the box. Basically, they're fishing around before they even get touched. Yeah. You're giving up seven yards if you don't put an extra safety in the box against the Eagles. Weirdly enough, I was interested to see that...

The Steelers' run game over the past eight games hasn't been very good either. They're 31st EPA per rush, 25th in success rate on the ground. I don't know why. Maybe it's just Tomlin magic. I still trust him just to muck it up enough for the Eagles' offense to keep it close. But the numbers say...

This is probably leaning towards the Eagles stomping, especially the Pickens out, because even when you start talking about the 12 personnel stuff, okay, that makes you feel a lot better when George Pickens is out there versus...

Whoever is, you know, whoever's going to be representing a wide receiver. Cause at least that's a coin flip, you know, like, you know, even though Quinn Mitchell is good and everything, at least he's going to give you a shot at some, okay, we don't need to eke out another four yards. We can get 30 right here. Okay. That makes it easier. I know. So I'm with you. I, yeah, Eagles are five point favorites. I think they're going to take this one. I just think,

It's going to be ugly. So maybe the Steelers do cover, but it's just one of those where it's like, it's hard for me to find that, that path. But again, this is what Tomlin does. This is just what, this is exactly the type of game that I'll say this. And then it's just like, Oh man,

Steelers win 24, you know, 14. How did that happen? And we're all just like, what? Also got to watch special teams, of course, involving the Steelers too. So is that your prediction? Yeah. Okay. Kind of. Yeah, we're on. We're in lockstep today. All right. We're going to take one last break and we'll come back to wrap up our deep dives.

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tilt as far as playoff implications. We have the Colts at the Broncos. Both teams coming off a bye week. If the Colts win, they're currently at a 30% chance to make the playoffs. If they win this game, it jumps up to 66% according to New York Times playoff machine. I think that's what they call it. Playoff model, playoff machine thing. Fun to click around on to make the playoffs. And then they have games remaining against the Titans at the Giants and then the Jags.

Not exactly a murderer's row to wrap up your season if after this game, they only have a 10% chance to make the playoffs if they lose. The Broncos currently have a 72% chance to make the playoffs, 89% if they win this game. So basically 9 out of 10 chance a shot that they make the playoffs if they win this. Drops down to 45% chance if they lose this game. So under a coin flip. Then they play at the Chargers, at the Bengals, and then home against the Chiefs.

A little more difficult than the other side there. Watching this game, Charles, do you have one thing, anything to check out here? I think it's going to be a pretty interesting one as far as because the Broncos' defense is probably the best unit of these four units. But anything else that you're checking out in this game? Yeah, I just want to see...

I know there's things at play here, like for the Colts immediately, as far as playoff hopes go. But I want to see if Anthony Richardson can play well against what is objectively one of the best defenses in football. I know they got torched by...

by Jameis and, you know, the touchdown pick fest a couple weeks ago. But overall, like, they've shut down a ton of offenses that they've played. And as much as I think Anthony Richardson is definitely better than Joe Flacco, it's not like their offense has actually been all that consistent since he got back. Like, they had moments. They had the game against the Jets. But overall, like, even since he got back, their 30th in success rate –

28th in rushing success rate, 24th in the offensive dropback success rate. It's not exactly pretty. They're averaging 4.9 yards per play. And against the Broncos defense,

They make it hard on you, man. They don't give an inch. They're tough up front. They have good players in the secondary. Their secondary is a lot more talented than the Colts wide receivers are. So this is probably going to be a superhero game for Anthony Richardson, and I just want to see if he can do it. I personally don't care if they win or lose. I just want to see how he plays because I think that that is the most compelling part of this game. I think the Broncos offense could have some pretty big success against the Colts defense for how they're playing right now. Same.

Yeah. It's interesting after the bye week, so that's why it's like... Especially you got Sean Payton. I don't know how stiking it is after the bye week, but Sean Payton I know was good after the bye, so that's why... Okay, what layers? You can drop it in here. Also...

you know, that's what this whole year about the Colts, because how young, especially on offense, they are. I've been like, man, I wish they had like a week nine by week or like a week 10. Not this is so late in the year that it wasn't perfect for maybe that you usually see teams get a little bump after the buy if they're well coached and if they have improving players and stuff. So what layers do they add? What stuff is kind of nice that they got a couple of games before that buy to see what they do with Richardson. But yeah,

Richardson against the Blitz. That'll be interesting. Can he nickel and dime this defense? Who does Sertan cover when they're in man situations? We saw Judy go off against whoever Sertan was not covering, essentially, a couple weeks ago. Pierce, Pittman, and Josh Downs has to have a huge game. Downs is practicing, which is huge for the Colts because he's probably their most consistent and best receiver overall. So it could be a big Downs game. The Broncos are pretty good against the slot, about middle of the pack.

Even when Riley Moss is the only... Just talk about all those Bucs injuries in these other games. The Broncos only had one player not practicing this week, and that was Riley Moss. Everybody else was practicing, which is huge, especially coming off the bye. But they're still not bad defending the slot, even when he's not out there. I am curious, though.

how much play action the Colts use. They like to use a lot of play action. Broncos are second in EPA per drop back against play action. So a lot of, you know, some strengths of the Broncos doesn't really match up well for the Colts. And then the other side, Gus Bradley doesn't blitz a lot. He's going to make, you know, that's kind of a stick.

He's going to make you nickel and dime you. A lot of cover three. A lot of cover four or two in there. That's what they run, just over and over. You saw Drake May have a real positive performance against this defense. Really, again, nickel and diming, having to be patient. This is a great game to see if Bo Nix can show that as well. They also...

Bo Nix doesn't do well against the Blitz. Matt and I broke this down earlier this week. He's kind of bottom five in every metric against the Blitz. Colts, though, don't Blitz. You know, they're 26. Do they increase that coming out of the bye week just for this matchup? Because you got to treat if you're the Colts, this is a playoff game. So

Game plan wise, throw the kitchen sink out there. Like just any changeups you can throw out there, you kind of have to do it. So kind of a fun matchup for that side too. But yeah, like you said, seeing Anthony Richardson, maybe

Maybe, you know, step it up in this game would be really fun. And for the Colts at least. And I like watching the Broncos defense and the Broncos and the Broncos run game should actually probably be able to get after his Colts run defense as well. Been better with DeForest Buckner out there, but you can still get after him. Broncos are four point favorites. Broncos with Broncos. Yeah.

I'm going to go Broncos, but Colts cover. I think it's a three-point Broncos win. Just to spice it up a little bit. I think the Broncos defense bludgeoned him, and it's over pretty fast. Is this an ugly one? Yeah. Cemetery game for the Colts offense. I can see that. I was looking at rushing success rate stats for an article earlier this week, the rookie article, and like,

It was like Zemir White has like the lowest rushing success rate. But then like Jonathan Taylor is like second to last. And I had to look at all the filters. I'm like, did I filter this wrong? I was like, no, that's just a fact. Huh. That's how I feel about the Colts. I was like, really? Okay. All right. Well, hopefully this bi-week revamped them, but we'll see. Last game here, Sunday night football.

Packers at Seahawks. Seahawks are two and a half point underdogs at home. Actually surprised me a little bit, but two and a half point underdogs at home. God, I feel like I watched this game a ton in college and just after college. Right. Oh my God. This was classic. Remember the, they opened the week or opened the season and the game. And then that was the Seahawks hit some like,

It was that classic Auburn play. It was the zone read, and then the receiver runs like a go-route when the corner crashes. And I remember the Seahawks did it, and everyone was like, oh my God, that's going to revolutionize football. We've never seen it again. Revolutionize football? You watch one game on Saturday, dude.

I know. That's the thing. Everyone's like, well, Auburn's been doing this for years. But I remember that everyone went nuts about that. But anyways, watching this game, Charles, we'll say when the Packers have the ball against the Seahawks defense, what are you keeping your eyes on?

oh, man, this is what I'm here for, Packers offense versus Seahawks defense. Because the Seahawks defense, especially since the bye, the combination of getting Ernest Jones and rolling that into the bye week, they've been one of the best defenses in football. I actually just deleted all of it by accident. But I can tell you. Controls it. Yeah. That's a good idea. But my hands are talking. Yeah.

They put the Cardinals. It's not like they just beat up on a bunch of crappy defense. Like when we talked about the Bucs earlier and, oh my God, like the defense numbers over the past month are crazy when they played. Like you look at the draft standings and there are the teams at the top that the Bucs have played. But the Seahawks, they played the Cardinals twice. They played the Jets. They played the Rams in that span. So Jets, not so much, but they did shut them down in the second half. Like totally and completely. And I think even when you go back and see that Rams game,

A lot of that was just... I thought a lot of that towards the end of the game was just Stafford heroics. Like, sometimes when he's on, you just can't do anything about it. They had... I think in that game, the Seahawks, they averaged the ramps to, like, 10 yards to go every third down attempt in that game. So...

you still give him 26 points. I feel like sometimes you just have to hat tip your opponent and say, hey, you got my ass this time. But I thought that one of the most, one of the more interesting things about this game was when I started looking up the, I got lost in the rabbit hole of like average deckplay

down, average distance at first down, third down. And the Seahawks defense, they have six of the top 16 performances in terms of just holding teams at bay on third down this season, which I think is interesting when you look at where the Packers are because they're running the ball pretty well right now. But their third down have not been good.

Over, you know, recently they've been one of the worst teams on third down. So if the Seahawks defense could continue that trend and keep them into like third and nine plus, third and ten plus, um,

especially with the way Leonard Williams is playing right now with the way Ernest Jones is playing right now, Nwosu has some good reps against the run versus the Cardinals. And also Byron Murphy is really starting to come to his own. Like that's a tough front to try and run against. So if you can get Jordan Love into some of these longer down distances, I know that he's a really good quarterback. He's one of the best in the league, but he's still got some bread farming him.

every once in a while, every now and then. And I think that that's where the Seahawks can have success. You know, we're going to keep things in front of us. We're going to get to third and 10, and then hopefully we can force them to make a mistake or do something in the air that gets us off the field. I think Mike McDonald's done such an incredible job with that defense. And, you know, I was talking with you a couple days ago when

When I went back to look at the early season numbers for the Seahawks defense, they weren't nearly as bad as I had in my brain. They were about like big average across the board. And now they're playing like one of the best defenses in football. And they beat down the Cardinals twice, who we know have a good offense too. So that's really impressive turnaround by them. And it's,

Encouraging because, especially for this game, is because the Packers and Cardinals have some same DNA as far as how they want to get after you. All the tight ends, the run game, play action stuff. So it's like, you know, the fact that they can hold up against that is huge because I felt like those offenses would...

I mean, the Patriots were able to move the ball on the Seahawks defense early in the year, you know? And so I, oh yeah, the Ernest Jones addition. And then the other linebacker, the rookie, I actually just studied him, Tyrese Knight. He got the nod after their bye week too. So like that's both of these guys come in. He's had some nice plays, man. He has. Nice.

Yeah, he's their fourth round pick. He has. I know that that was the thing. I mean, going into the season, I started really see Alex became one of my summer teams kind of like where I was like start started squint going like, okay, actually, I kind of like you. I had him as a playoff team and everything, but it was all about their front and their back end.

not their linebackers. And now that they have tolerable play at linebacker, it's like, oh yeah, your front and your back end are really good. You got, you got Devin Witherspoon. You got Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant's actually having some nice games. Julian Love is really dynamic, you know, and then up front, like you already mentioned all the guys up there. So. Dude, they've tinkered a lot with this defense throughout the season. They have. Um,

Getting Ernest Jones, basically reshuffling the whole starting inside linebacker room from the season. They moved Kobe Bryant to safety, which is working out really well. They just cut him. Yeah. Get off the team. Sorry. We made mistakes. See you. See you. See you.

Yeah. It's not you. It's us. No, no. Great point about the third and longs, because that is Mike McDonald's thing. You know, like all the stuff he was doing with the Ravens and all the funky looks. And we saw it last week against the Cardinals. It was like, oh, okay. He's starting to get in his bag a little bit. And this is a great game for it. And like you said, I'm trying to make Jordan love more like far than Rogers. Cause he's kind of the middle ground between those two. So like get them to be more like that.

And put up some prayer balls, put up some, maybe you get Witherspoon or, or, or love jump something because they're like, oh, okay. They're running. They run a ton of dagger too. Maybe they run dagger. Maybe they run another dig here. I'll play action. Oh, speaking of play action, this is the stat I had for this side of the ball.

The Seahawks, I'm sorry, Jordan Love has the 15th most play action attempts this year, play action pass attempts. He's second in EPA per dropback off play action this year. Seahawks defense, 28th.

against play action in terms of EPA per drop back. So that is one little path there for this Packers team that they don't have to change. This is what they want to do. I always love seeing what they kind of get to because they do some fun stuff, the tight ends, Luke Musgraves practicing by the way. But also they also have a mini buy because they played last Thursday. So when you get a little mini buy, maybe they get a little fresh idea on here and then they get to watch the Seahawks and study them, go after that. So yeah,

I think this is a really cool, cool, cool, cool matchup, especially like you said, the Seahawks defense is playing like a top five unit right now, statistically and eye test doing some cool things. So yeah, and I love watching the Packers offense. One of my favorite offenses to watch run game wise love is really fun. We'll see which receivers they lean into. We might have a great battle between Reed and Devin Witherspoon and slot, which is a great battle.

Tucker Kraft against the tight ends will be fun. Or, I'm sorry, against the safeties will be fun. So, other side, though, Seahawks offense, Packers defense, anything on this side? Because for me, it's like, I think I keep the good times going. Seahawks, try and keep running that ball. Yeah, that's all I'm going to say. Keep trying to run the ball. Because for most of the season, the...

I would say for the vast majority of the season, the playbook's been the same when we talk about the Seahawks. Geno, keep us alive, Geno. Come on. We're trying to weather the storm. But if you could, like,

It's never going to be as easy as it was last week to run the ball. Because, I mean, they had Lake and Thompson looking like goddamn Larry Allen. It was crazy. It really didn't make any sense. And the Cardinals should probably just look in the mirror all week after what happened to them in that game. That was an ass-kicking. I don't think it'll be that easy this week. But if you can just get some production on the ground and not end up

in situations where Geno has to carry the whole load, that's obviously a better chance to win because the Packers' defense, one thing we've consistently said that they keep doing is get turnovers. That's the one thing they're going to do every week. So if you can just...

not get to the part where, you know, where they, where the bend don't break defenses, where they don't break. If you just kind of power through that and not turn the ball over. I think this had a chance to be a, like maybe not, not a big win in terms of score, but a big win in terms of like stamping yourself. It's like a true NFC playoff team this week for, for the Seahawks.

Yeah, because I still hold the Packers pretty high in kind of my mental estimation. But the Seahawks are more like, oh, yeah, they're interesting to now that it's like, man, you guys actually might just be good.

And that's huge. No, great point about Geno and stuff. They need the run game to cook. And you can against this Packers defense. I believe Adrian Cooper is playing again, which is huge for the Packers because he's their best linebacker. And going against this offense, definitely going to want that. Talked about this a little bit. Seahawks offensive line improved tremendously once they made some offensive line changes with a little bit teaming at center and then the...

the guy whose name I always butcher at right guard. I'm going to look it up. Satioa, LaMuya, but at right guard. Abe Lucas at right tackle. And they're all playing well, which is huge. And so the Seahawks have answers here. The Packers defense isn't bad.

Overwhelming there. I think they're solid ish, but they are going against the Seahawks team to start to find themselves and start to figure it all out. So, yeah, I'm very, very excited for this battle. Like I said before, the Seahawks are two and a half point underdogs at home. What's your prediction for the game?

I think the Seahawks get it done. I think they get it done on the strength of their defense. You know, it's funny because every time I watched Leonard Williams play, I covered him in New York. He's a great guy. Awesome, awesome dude. Dropping a hell of a year. But there's been a running joke throughout his career. When he's really blowing up, it must be a career year for Leonard because, you know, he's got the talent. He's got the talent to do this every year, you know. So I looked it up and not –

technically a career year career uh you know a contract year for him but the seahawks can't absolutely cut him after the season so he got two years left on his deal after this year he's playing for his his nfl life right now you know and it shows hey the desperation's a hell of a drug man i wrote i wrote it but i was like if you just looked at the last month he's like defensive player of the year

Oh yeah. Yeah. He's so good right now. He is. Yeah. No, it's always been like, I always viewed him as like a super plugger, like more of like, Oh, he's big. And then, but he's athletic as a plugger. And now it's like, Oh, you,

You actually can bend and like rush the passer on top of you, all the run stuff. So yeah, no great chat with him. That's funny. I'm going with a, I'm going with a Packers win actually in Seattle, but I think this game is going to be back and forth and fun. I'm pretty excited about Packers win, but I'm not feeling good about it is my prediction for this game.

All right. Well, that's it for our deep dives or house fights are lipstick on a pig quarterback slop watch. We are going to get to a mailbag question. And remember, you can either send in your mailbag question of football 301 mailbag at Yahoo sports.com or submit a review on Apple podcasts, preferably five stars that will jump you to the front of the line. If you give us four stars, I don't know if you jumped in front of the line. It wasn't a damn good question, but this is from.

I can't say the name. Here's the door 13. There's a,

Yeah, I'm not allowed to read it out loud. I get beeped out there. Good question, though. In the modern NFL, is there any place for traditional spot drop zone coverages or is everyone playing some variety of man match zone right now? Oh, and just just to kind of explain this real quick. So man coverage is I have this guy across from me. I'm man to man on number 12. Say the receiver is number 12. I have him. I have this guy wherever he goes. Spot.

spot drop is i have this it's zone coverage that's what spot drop is and this is why some are zone man splits sometimes are a little skewed because matches in the middle of this but zone is i am the curl flat player i go to this area and if something happens i go to this area i have this area eyes on the quarterback i am the deep half player i am the flat player but you're to a zone there are some well there's some details with it but that is the general zone coverage so

Man coverage, I have this man. Zone coverage, I have spot drop zone coverage, I have this zone. Match coverage is number count. So if you're looking at trips formation, the outside guy is number one, the slot guy is number two, the inside guy is number three.

Guys all have to relate to the number. So I'm the number three match guy. And this is when we talk about bunch formations and stacks and guys switching, releasing. That's why you want to do it because is that guy number two or number three at the stack? And that's what you're trying to do to defenses, get them to hesitate that extra half second. So that's what match coverage is. There's other rules to it. If this guy runs this route, you're matching the route.

The, you know, the route concept. So I will make an under call if this guy goes five yards underneath. So there's a little details to it, but that's the general rules of the differences of zone man and match. But you generally, I would say 85 to 90% of the time now it's match. And then, and then even zone coverages these days have some match rules, you know, based on some stuff, but then you'll see a guy like Todd Bowles just run cover three,

And it was just, dude, it throws me off every time I see it. This guy's just running out there, not even looking anywhere, just running to their area, covering it and looking at the quarterback. So it's pretty funny. Cover two, I guess, is pretty spot droppy. Yeah. If you kind of look at that, there's some match rules. Some do, but teams will be doing just spot drop cover two a little bit. So I guess there is a little bit of influx in that.

And my answer is yes, there is room for traditional spot drop coverages. In fact, you will see it. The Bucs will do it a bunch with Todd Bowles. And you still see it a lot when defenses are in base defense and not in sub, meaning nickel or dime. They will prefer to play spot drop as opposed to match. Just kind of the rules based on what the offensive looks are, yada, yada, yada. So yes, there's absolutely a place. I've actually liked it a lot as a changeup.

as quarterbacks get used to all the match stuff, okay, they're going to play it this way, and then just kind of throw it in there and just kind of like just to change up the angles that the defenders are moving at, the spot, the locations they get to. You always just want the quarterback to hold the ball that extra half second, that extra second that can kind of do that. So definitely some angles there on it. Any thoughts on this when you see spots drop? I've never played quarterback or –

called plays, except on college football 25. You know, so... Oh. I know. I look. They have... On this game, they have... I run quarters every play, so... On this game, they have the signifiers, like, you can call cover four, and then it'll see, like, a little tag underneath the matcher zone. And you can tell the difference. So I... I mean, on the game, because the match rules are all f***ed up, I run spot drop for the most part. But I do think that, like you said, spot drop's a good changeup because...

the more reps you go through, like on the pattern mat stuff, you can start to recognize like,

okay, you know, this guy's going to take this receiver at this point. And at that point, I know I can throw it at that point. But if you get used to seeing the pattern match stuff and all of a sudden someone doesn't follow receiver, you've already moved, you've already moved into like that physical thought process of he's going to that. I think that's sometimes where you see some, some interceptions happen, like as a whole. No, you probably don't want the spot drop in a hundred percent of the time you're going to get shredded. Or, you know, as a, it's funny because it's funny as like times change,

I get to the older you get and you start learning more about football and the terms people use because when I was in high school, we called that country football.

Yeah, country zone. Yeah, country zone. And now when I get to media stuff on Spot Drop, I was like, oh, wait, these mean the same exact thing. Yeah, country zone. Yeah, that's funny. I haven't heard that term in a while. Right? Yeah. But, yeah, if you run it all the time in the NFL, you will get shredded for sure. So it's got to be. Rodgers shredded. The Dolphins tried to run it as a changeover. Rodgers shredded it for Seamer out. Fun question. I can't answer that question. Maybe think about high school. Yeah.

Yeah, sorry, blank keys to the door, can't say your name. But it made me think of high school when we started realizing that if we just ran switch verticals, these high school DBs would get so confused. And it takes two seconds to install it. It's just got to be burning to my brain. Trips right at 60 switch, touchdown, every time. 60 switch verticals. The play that we, when I was with the Raiders,

Got everybody. It was switch first, but we were on a swing with it with the running back. And it would just out two by two. And it would just bust the match rules all the time because the swing route would screw them all up. Why have to carry that? And then so you just create that little half second of hesitation. And oh, my God, I was gas city. Not enough teams do it anymore. Actually, I've been curious about that. Most teams don't want to sit because you have to be kind of static to get to it. But yeah, closing it out today. That was a fun one.

Charles and I will be back on Sunday to recap Week 15 with the fifth quarter. Maybe it's these five games while Sunday night will be gone. So maybe it's these games. Maybe someone else props up on Sunday. That's super interesting. You'll have to listen to find out. I'm Nate Tice. You can find me on social media, Nate underscore Tice on Twitter, and Nate Tice on Blue Sky. Charles, where can they find you? You can find me online.

On Blue Sky 4verts, Twitter 4verts, PlayStation Network 4verts. Oh, yeah, you are PlayStation Network 4verts. Yeah, I am. There's a little, you know, a different number symbol in there, so you have to figure it out. But if you get on there and add me, I will not accept your friend request. So there you go. Man, the people. My gamer tags are all...

I Wu Tang to my name. The old classic 360 gamer tags. Yeah. Gamer tag, man. That showed my age. You said 360. How about OG Xbox? Yeah. Bill Barnwell and I had old segment. I'll talk about our original halo, the big old Xbox controllers, the size of my laptop. I loved them because I began. So they were great. And, uh, but the black and white buttons were at the bottom.

That was, that was, they didn't do the. My mom threw my Xbox control out the window one time. I was grounded when I was playing. I wasn't supposed to. So I never got to play online really that much. Cause I was just a malfeasance as a kid, but it's okay.

Things haven't changed. I never really got the video games taken away. I got other things. I usually got the bad looks. But subscribe to us. Follow us. Rate us five stars. If not, just yell at us on Twitter. I'm on Blue Sky anyways. Whatever. But watch us on YouTube as well on the Yahoo Sports YouTube channel. Thanks to Brett and Stone behind the scenes. Thank you all for listening. Enjoy your weekend. Army, Navy on Saturday as well. Make sure to check that out. Thank you all for listening. See you guys on Sunday.

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