S-

...

but I think would be interested to see, do you have enough time to marry those concepts together? Uh, you're putting Christian Parker up in the booth, which is often kind of a dicey sign for a coordinator already early, but do those changes at least shore up the fact that, like...

I mean, this was basic stuff.

The Cowboys were getting motioned to death.

They weren't able to mark their guys.

It looked really scattershot over the first couple weeks of the season.

Like, is the quarterback a long-term fit if we change the offense as we have? Is the head coach actually the stability, uh, that we were thinking was, you know, uh, you know, he's a fail-safe choice because they, all they do is win and all that? Like, where are the Eagles in this moment? I mean, gotta win this game, gotta figure out how to win this one, Connor.

But what happened? Like, w- as you've heard everybody talking, give their story, what happened there?

I think ultimately, uh, it's, it's gotta come down to the quarterback.

To see Dan Quinn's reaction on that, I think it's a combination of quarterback and play call, right? Because if you watch the thing, and God, I've watched it 600 times now, there are wide receivers on that play running legitimate routes, right? And there is Jayden looking to throw, and what he's supposed to do in that situation is look if the throw's there.

If not, immediately clock it or throw it away.

That's how that play is designed.

But, like, everything about it is designed in a way that they have time.

And so here's what nobody's admitting.

But the management of that under the microscope when you've got so much noise around it, that in and of itself has to be tough to manage.

But what happened? As you've heard everybody talk and give their story, what happened there?

I think ultimately it's got to come down to the quarterback.

To see Dan Quinn's reaction on that, I think it's a combination of quarterback and play call, right? Because if you watch the thing, and God, I've watched it 600 times now, there are wide receivers on that play running legitimate routes, right? And there is.

Jaden looking to throw, and what he's supposed to do in that situation is look if the throw's there, if not, immediately clock it or throw it away.

That's how that play is designed.

But everything about it is designed in a way that they have time.

And so here's what nobody's admitting.

But the management of that under the microscope when you've got so much noise around it, that in and of itself has to be tough to manage.

Harry in the water

It's very complicated for me because if I were privy to the amount of information that Adam is, I would tweet everything prematurely, uh, and I would enjoy every second of it because it's very fun to know something that other people don't know and to put it out in the world.

It just is.

Um, y- we can bemoan the state of things, but I, I think that'll take care of itself.

I mean, you're already seeing entire organizations, The Athletic being one of them, back away, and CBS, back away from the insider title altogether.

Um, I think we're probably in the waning moments of this, um, and as people crave more substance a- and, and quality, uh, i- in their, uh, in the reporting.

But at the same time, it's like wha- what do you do to stop it at this point? It's, you know, I, I don't know.

It just, to me, it feels dirty and, and, and a little more dull than it used to be

Uh, could this be Todd Bowles' last game as a Bucs coach if it goes a certain direction?

I don't think it's gonna be his last game, and I- I've developed, like, a, a, a massive amount of sympathy for this team actually.

Uh, and I'll say why.

Because the m- narrative has now shifted.

A lot of people thought, "Oh, okay, well, they kept Todd Bowles over Liam Cohen," and, and that's not necessarily true.

At the time, they offered to pay Liam Cohen and make him the highest paid offensive coordinator in the NFL with the idea that he would probably one day take over for Todd Bowles.

The Jaguars just swooped in at the last minute and were like, "We have to have this guy.

And hopefully McDaniel's learned from what he saw in that loss.

But as someone who covers the league at large, what have you thought about the discourse surrounding Cam Ward this season?

Well, and as someone who was a beat writer for a long time, it's hard to make it to the podium to get the quarterback sometimes.

So I'll start there, right? I mean, that conversation around Cam saying, "Well, you only got three minutes to see all the people that are here," all that stuff, anybody who's ever covered an NFL team needs to understand, or hasn't covered an NFL team, needs to understand that you're in the locker room, you're trying to get quotes, and then all of a sudden someone says, "Hey, the quarterback's over here across the room," and you're trying to finish an interview that you're doing and then get over to the quarterback in time.

It's a weird back and forth, and even from moment one, I kind of interpreted that as him just trying to lighten the mood, uh, say a joke.

Um, and, and I think that he's at that point, right, where nationally I think people are gonna jump on him for everything and to misinterpret him for everything without knowing the kind of person he is.

But the flip side of that is I think Cam probably needs to understand his position and know that, like, maybe it's time to just kind of button it up a little bit, you know, and, and, you know, and try to avoid some of those unforced errors too.

So I think it's a mix of bad, but he's in that really terrible situation where no matter what you do, people are gonna probably call you out on it, so...

When you look at those teams specifically, do you see any common denominators as to why they're winning and the Titans haven't so far this season?

Go ahead, Connor.

My thought on this is that, like, officials are...

I- it's harder to be an NFL official now than ever, right? The, the rule book is biblical.

The league is still behind in terms of allowing them technology to reverse calls and allowing them even the ability to reverse certain calls, and these horrific calls or missed calls tend to stand, and then everyone just hates them.

And I comp it to teachers a little bit who, like, you're adding students to the classroom, you're adding, uh, off-hour responsibilities, and at some point they're gonna snap, and they snapped, right? Trey McBride spent the whole game being like, "Hey, that's a shitty call.

That's a shitty call." And after three quarters, the official turns around and is like, "[beep] you, dude," and it, my job's hard.

And I kind of was, you know, I'm kind of standing with the officials a little bit here.

Oh, my God.

Oh, hell yeah

...

Mike Ruhnberg, uh, the defensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns.

What we saw, I think, uh, against Carolina Sunday was him really settling into a groove and him being able to get confidence in digging out of his bag of tricks.

They're playing almost like the inverse of the Jim Schwartz wide nine.

They're kind of, uh, compacting the field a little bit, but it's allowing them to explore different kinds of simulated pressures.

And when you have Carson Schwesinger, what you can do is you can kind of almost build back in that vintage Lovie Smith, Brian Urlacher suite of plays, which is really interesting, right? I mean, he can drop, uh, and create that Tampa 2 look for your defense.

But I'd love to see the Raiders fans really make that crowd pop.

I mean, the Eagles were out of sorts because of this entire Bears team.

This is something that Case Keenum offers you that Tyson Bagent just doesn't.

And, you know, he's been in that support quarterback role, which means he's doing a lot of the tendency work for teams.

He's helping support, um, the, the QB one in a lot of these situations.

Case Keenum was around for Fangio one, right? Like, the, the first iteration of this defense that was great with Jim Harbaugh in San Francisco.

He's seen it more.

And so what you can do when you're Ben Johnson is just present a larger portion of the playbook to the defense.

But let's hold before we talk about them as a true titan of the league, Connor Orr.

Mm-hmm.

Eight fumbles in 18 games.

That's not good, right? And that's gonna rear its head in November and December and January when it actually matters.

But that Chargers' first touchdown drive, even then, they needed a roughing the passer call that really kind of jump-started them, and it was just a bunch of, like, you know, kind of chippy runs in there.

This thing doesn't look right at all.

When Justin Herbert threw that awful interception, uh, which Brady's call was great on, um, he ignored a wide open checkdown.

Like, he's just kind of throwing himself into oblivion.

I mean, 257 yards of offense, Connor, doesn't speak to, like, a big step forward for the offense, even if they were, uh, effective in the red zone.

Every team is that vulnerable.

vulnerable.I'm getting demolished right now for what I wrote about this, but I just don't think anybody's talking nearly enough about the fact that when you lose a quarterback this early in the season, you are highly likely to end up with a top 10 pick.

You're even more likely to end up with a top seven pick.

If this is finally the year where the four or five quarterbacks coming out of m- college materialize that we think are going to materialize, we're gonna have the Commanders and the Giants having legitimate discussions about what the F they're going to do.

And I think that it's not why Jaxson Dart wanted to come back in this game.

I just think this guy's so desperate to prove himself, but we have two quarterbacks who might not get the chance.

I mean, Jaxson Dart will have played, what, 14 games over the course of two seasons, and the Giants might have the fourth overall pick in the upcoming draft, you know? A- and, and what happens when that happens, right?

I was like, I was like, "Oh, man."

Explain how that could happen based on these two major injuries.

So I looked back at historical precedent of teams that have lost their backup quarterbacks this early.

And a lot of times, regardless of, you know, how promising the roster is, you're probably going to end up with a top 10 pick.

And in a majority, a slight majority of those cases, you're going to end up with like a top seven pick.

If the giants and the commanders end up in that territory and the quarterback class coming out of college holds, as we see it now that there might be three or four quality starters there.

Can either of these teams pass up on an opportunity to maybe upgrade the position when both Jaden Daniels and Jackson Dart just haven't been healthy enough to deliver the sample size? And I bring it up just because I think it's a very interesting argument.

At the very least, they have to do what the Bears did, which is trade the rights to get Bryce Young only to come back a year later and hope that you get Caleb Williams.

Are they in deep, deep, deep, deep trouble?

Like, that, that's a little bit to me of the Harbaugh thing is, like, you've gotta get-- It's not been a good weekend for the Harbaughs in general, but you've gotta come out of there and that team needs to have more fight under John Harbaugh than they showed from the Dart injury on forward.

I think the challenge now, uh, understanding that your offense is gonna be entirely broken or at least, uh, over the top strange with Jameis Winston over the next month and a half, is to continue to work to weaponize this defense, because I think that was the one bright spot in that game last night.

Abdul Carter was being double-teamed and held, and still managed to get his first sack of the season.

He is a legitimate havoc causer on this defense.

You have the talent on that defensive line, so play to that, right? I mean, whether that's a heavier dose of Cam Skattebo, and he was being subbed out at weird times last night that I didn't really understand for what reason.

But maybe it's putting Jameis Winston in certain situations where you can at least maximize your pass rush in some way, shape, or form.

Make it as fun as we think it can be.

Go ahead, Connor.

Like, maybe he's the, this is the 2001 Barry Bonds season, and Josh Allen is that guy, only he's not on the juice presumably.

He might be that guy.

I mean, I think that you've heard a lot of talk this year about coaches who have pulled a lot of guys from the preseason, and we've seen even fewer preseason reps.

And if you think about the effect of that, the lack of hitting, the lack of tackling, Josh Allen's about the worst person that you wanna face when you're still not acclimated to hitting people on a down-to-down basis.

So maybe he gets that early season pop because guys don't wanna tackle him.

He's in great shape.

You know, guys are still not used to getting their eyes moved and pushed off their spot by a quarterback, all that kind of stuff, and, and this is where Allen excels.

I'm just wondering, do they have the players? Does this team have the horses on defense?

They have a chance after, we'd have to go months down the road to say it's one of the best offenses we've ever watched, until someone figures this system out.

I'm so excited.

The, so, by the time this is up, I'll have like a 2,000-word manifesto on the boom in under center offenses.

It's up on si.com. And what I'm so excited about is, I mean, Ben really brought this back in full force.

He took Kaleb Williams, who played eight snaps under s- uh, uh, under center in college, and made him like the poster child of under center play in the NFL.

But you have Brian Flores on the other side, who blitzed at like an 83% rate, and I was talking to defensive coaches around the league, and I'm saying, "What can you do to mitigate, uh, the, the advantages that are gained by under center play?" And it's basically like you're ramming two linebackers or two blitzers right at the center on both sides of those A gaps, and you're trying to shoot guys up field and basically clock the quarterback before he can even get the ball back to the running back.

You saw it happen, actually it happened to the Vikings last week, which was really cool to see.

All right, go ahead.

Um, I take any doubts I have about Reid and company back.

Yeah, I met the member of Andy Reid's staff that is, that culls this kind of obscure black-and-white footage before.

It was pretty cool to, to listen to his process.

We talked about it during the, uh, Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl a couple years back.

But what we're hearing a lot about in week one is the under center thing, the under center thing.

But what it basically means is, like, I'm changing the sight line for the defensive line.

They can't key on what's going on because it's harder for them to see.

Who wanna fly with the Jets? [cheering]

So, there were positives, uh, to take out of from, from Houston's side of it, too.

Right.

And I think that in between those two things, 'cause it was bookends, right? I think it was the fumble right at the beginning of the game to close out that first drive, and then a fumble at the end of the game.

Um, but really it's the last play, so is it technically a fumble if it's a s- like, I, I, I don't know.

Uh, but the, um, the moments in between, like that throw, uh, down the sideline to Collins to set up that touchdown I thought was one of the best throws that I had seen all Sunday.

And the, basically that second drive of the first quarter to the middle of the fourth quarter, that was some of the best Stroud that I'd seen, y- you know, definitely last year and maybe even the year prior.

So, I think there's, there's a lot to look up to.

You're allowed to say, "Well, maybe it's one of those things where a new guy comes in and everything is different." So beautiful night in the Meadowlands for the, for the home team.

[laughs]

I, I'm, I, I, I know we had fans at this game, because I was tweeting with them and, and just saying, "Please, God, understand what I am trying to say." I never said that you would not pack a stadium.

In fact, if you were to put an NFL game in East Biscuit, Nebraska, I could get 100,000 people to go to that game too.

You have 100,000 people on a whole continent.

You should be able to pack the Melbourne Cricket Grounds.

Good for you that you did that.

It looks like you had a great time.

You did both things.

Um, we come out of this with the, uh, with the i- impression that they were unable to solve what they couldn't solve last winter.

One interesting thing, um, and I think Dan Casey, uh, pointed this out on Twitter, speaking of just kind of the general sloppiness of it.

That last play of the game when Drake Maye threw the interception, both of the tackles are cut blocking, which is something you don't normally do on, like, a standard drop back pass.

Like, it's, like, screen action, or maybe it's like, you know, it's just, it's not something you would do with that route concept, I don't think.

And so it's strange because I wonder if, like, everyone was even on the same page there on that play, or if that was something of a broken play.

I mean, it's, the onus is obviously on Maye to g- throw that away and realize that you're in a situation to tie the game and keep it going.

But I, I think there was more to that.

Hmm

[laughs]

Which is something that nobody said between d- whatever it was, tw- 2006 and 2018 or whatever he was super dominant.

But, um, I, I, I'm more than happy if I'm Seattle that all the expectations, all the pressure is on Los Angeles to realize this Super Bowl dream, and all you're doing is running your program.

And one interesting thing that, you know, people were telling me about the Seahawks team is if you thought last year's team was good, and you thought that they were gonna take a step back because of the players they lost, look at guys like Riley Mills, right, who was hurt most of his rookie season, came in during the Super Bowl, blasted through the Patriots line, and sacked Drake May.

Like, they're deep with these fourth and fifth round picks that just didn't get on the field a lot last year and that are gonna be the stars of tomorrow.

So I think a lot of people...

You know, I, they're in the perfect situation for fandom.

So you're right back to testing, um, what happened in one of the worst games you played all season.

Will Minter be the magic elixir? Maybe, but I'm gonna have to see that as well.

I think one of the issues is, and I'm as guilty of this as anyone, uh, I criticize owners for it all the time.

But in the media world, we seem to fall into the same traps, where there's a bucket of success, like Mike McDonald, and then you're putting Jesse Minter in that same archetype, and you're saying, "Okay, copy and paste defensive guru from this tree going over and doing something else." Mike McDonald, part of the reason he was so great, I mean, you see it on Hard Knocks, incredible interpersonal skills, humility, all that kind of stuff.

We don't know if Jesse Minter is that yet, and I think that has a lot to do.

There's a lot of complicated dynamics in the Ravens building, Lamar being one of a few situations and hurdles that he's gonna have to jump over.

And so, uh, can he do that? I don't know.

But I do know he's a damn good defensive coordinator, and what, they were 18th, I think, in terms of EPA per play allowed last year.

But I understand that is an outcome here as well.

But the recovery part of it was the part that he was really looking at about how his body was recovering from these things.

I love the fact that this is essentially the inverse of the Myles Garrett signing, right? Myles Garrett is on the roster to play him every single down, and what you're gonna do by virtue of having him on the field is you're gonna know what the other team's doing.

They're gonna run away from him, and they're gonna slide their protection to him, and then you can build your defense around it.

I wrote this, uh, last night, um, at si.com, but what Aaron Donald does is it gives you the right to say, "I've got a giant space death laser locked in my garage, and I don't know when I'm gonna pull it out.

I might pull it out this week.

I might not pull out the death laser this week.

Sometimes the death laser, I just want to show it to you, so you look at the death laser.

Connor, tell me why, uh, MILF should be in a different category al- already.

Go ahead.

So, uh, I entered into ChatGPT, uh, "Make me a logo for a new football team called the Green Bay Smackers.

Our team wants to win by smacking everyone else on the butts until they cry.

Please include my picture.

I'm Justin Graver."

[laughs] Connor.

I, uh, I conjured a little, uh, Sessler on this one.

Uh, "The 2026 Seattle Seahawks: enough about informed magazine whites penning opuses about culture building.

They could, they could go all in, or they could start all over with a new GM.

So I think I'm, I'm willing to go there.

I'm willing to go the 13-win route because, like, when I did my, um, and our buddy Nick Wright from Syracuse called it the worst list ever created in the history of sports media, um, which made me feel good.

Um, but when I did my 14 li- uh, team list, uh, of teams that I thought that could win the Super Bowl, I kinda took the, the final four playoff teams, the best offenses in the NFL, the best defenses, and you round up all those characteristics and what you really like about them and what they have and who's calling the plays and all that stuff.

And I, the Vikings have a lot of that, right? They have a lot of that.

And I think my concern or my question is, what's it gonna be like when, and this happens to literally every quarterback and every coach that, uh, have experience.

What's it gonna be like when the rock and the hard place come together? Kyler doesn't like wide zone offense and the way that Kevin O'Connell calls it, and O'Connell loves it and obviously went through a lot of hurdles to be able to get it this way this season.

It's a little blurry.

Right

... for having higher draft picks, all that kind of stuff.

You can look it up and read it on essay.com.

But the, the, the tenor of that time was also the Brian Flores Dolphins, right? And what a lot of coaches have said to me over the years is, "I know that unless I do well enough to earn that fan sentiment in the first year, I'm not going to survive to the point where I get to coach this wonderkind quarterback anyway." And so if you're Jeff Hafley, you have no choice but to win four or five games and make it look pretty damn inspiring in the process because you're a defensive-minded head coach, and if you suck that first year, Stephen Ross is going to fire you and hire one of these promising young offensive play callers to pair with the quarterback.

Uh, and so, and I think the same thing could be said of your Jets, right? They made market improvements in the off-season for Aaron Glenn to get to the point where they're at least moderately stable.

Aaron Glenn knows if they bottom out, he, his ass is gone, and so he's not going to get the chance to coach the guy anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

The, the, the teams that have it right are the Jets because they have enough draft capital to move up and get the guy anyway, but all these other teams I think are going to be trying to make the playoffs.

Absolutely