Rodney Thomas

One injury on the back end of your defense.

Okay, we've seen Rodney Thomas come in and perform well.

Now we have two.

And we're going up against, as we covered this week earlier, Adam, a pretty good group of wide receivers.

Like we're looking at it going, okay, well, how could this possibly play out? That might be a path.

It's a path.

It just seems, I mean, they got Rodney Thomas.

They have, they got AJ Finley.

without the guy who's the last line of defense, two guys who have now never played together yet.

It looks like it'll be A.J. Finley and Rodney Thomas.

Both were on that ready squad until they've been signed to the 53 in the case of Rodney Thomas.

You just hope there's not a coverage bust, but it is kind of the ideal situation.

Backup quarterback for the commanders, a team that looks like they're dealing with their own issues, so you can ease them in.

They were confident enough in the limited action he saw last year to say you're the starter.

And now, ironically, we haven't seen him yet this year.

So, all right, who's the next next man up? Well, it's Rodney Thomas.

Sorry, he's going to be out.

Rodney Thomas is what I meant to say.

And A.J. Finley are going to be the starting safeties in this game.

What do you think about that? It seems like maybe that could be the only weakness that we've got against Marty Oda, who likes to throw the ball.

I, you know, I would imagine, you know, AJ Finley in particular is an interesting guy.

He makes a lot of plays.

Rodney Thomas has done well.

He's been in position to make plays.

I mean, it's thin.

When you've got Okada and Julian Love out, and then you've got Rodney Thomas who's up, but he's been on the practice squad, and he's played well, but he's still a backup.

I've got concerns here.

So everybody's got to pick their game up for this one.

Tyra Cotta hasn't been out there.

And Rodney Thomas...

Looks like maybe another one of those John Schneiders, hey, I fooled you all and grabbed one of these great free agents that no one wanted to look at, and the dude's coming in and playing as a top-level safety in the NFL.

You can't look at this team and go, yeah, they got this regression, the Super Bowl hangover.

It creates more havoc and more ways for Mike McDonald to just kind of have a opposing coaches and opposing offenses guessing they don't know what's going to happen whether it's secondary players and pretty much like two three guys who are viable blitzers not just spoon like like they've had julian love down in the box as much as they did in week one but also your linebackers are past rushing threats and your inside linebackers and then you've got your dime backer essentially or you know big nickel guy and even more he can also be a serious ed rushing threat too um so they basically have kind of bucked the trend and bucked you know traditional roster forming as far as building such a formidable defense and the ways that they can generate pass rush

it's awesome to see and we just may be able to hold on to those 10 draft picks and next year's 11 yeah

can i bring up one interesting conversation i don't think we've had yet um on a topic and i kind of want to get your guys thoughts Does Ty Okada, when he's healthy, start immediately, or does Rodney Thomas, now that he's on the 53, has he taken that role away from Ty Okada?

I think it's that you do what you did with Kobe, where Kobe was a good soldier, and you could have made the argument that Ty was better than Kobe last year in how he performed, yet Kobe got the job back when he returned.

Julian Love has been playing out of his mind.

But it just seems like even if they have a few guys get banged up, like they put Rodney Thomas into the lineup.

Rodney Thomas has played really, really well the first two games.

It just seems like Mike McDonald just got that magic touch where – Next man up, he'll play like he's an NFL starter.

That's just the way that, you know, and it's a culture thing, too.

Julian Love has been playing out of his mind.

But it just seems like even if they have a few guys get banged up, like they put Rodney Thomas into the lineup.

Rodney Thomas has played really, really well the first two games.

It just seems like Mike McDonald just got that magic touch where – Next man up, he'll play like he's an NFL starter.

That's just the way that, you know, and it's a culture thing too.