Xavier Scott

Is it? No? See, it's a noon game.

Why did they change that? Do you guys remember? I'm not crazy.

It used to always be 1130.

Yeah, you're correct.

This is

fresh.

Fresh from the horse farm, guys.

They smeared it between two pieces of bread and said, here, eat this.

Rick Scott.

It's Xavier Scott-

Oh, that's it

...

... with the ball.

Um, I mean, I think they used Xavier Scott there as a third running back last year.

They did.

They did, yeah.

Now, I will tell you there's a guy who's available.

Xavier Scott.

He's averaging 4.6 yards per carry on an awful team.

I don't think you'd have to give much up.

And yes, very good use of the cold bowl or the hot bowl, I should say.

For me, I'm giving it to Xavier Thomas.

I got him.

I got him later.

They want to get the ball in his hands.

He's fast, and they want him to have opportunities.

He rewarded them with a big return this week, so a little bit of silver lining in this game is Xavier Thomas maybe figuring out

the return game.

They, time of possession was killing them, so it took forever to get to the fourth series, and that's when Swift came back in and they got the touchdown.

And so I think one of the bigger criticisms I can maybe come up with in the run game aspect is you didn't decide to start Salvon Ahmed, right, and you went with Xavier Scott.

And I don't know.

I know more about Salvon Ahmed because I saw what he did in training camp.

That's fine

...

but I'm not gonna knock Xavier Scott when they didn't even give him the ball.

No, but it's more-

Yeah, Alec, I'm, I'm curious.

I thought Scott was kind of an ideal third back in this offense, and obviously they love Claiborne's speed and upside, but I would've kept Scott on the regular at, at cutdown day, and I said so at the time.

Uh, now it's not like he's tearing it up someplace else in the NFL, but I just thought big body, can run between tackles, can catch the ball, knows the system, a little more polished than Claiborne.

What do you think of that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's definitely...

I remember roster cutdown, that wa- he was a tough one, Xavier Scott, because he did know the system.

He did have to step in last year in Dublin against the Steelers.

He caught a pretty impressive touchdown pass in that game, and I know, like, there, there were people internally just positive about his ab- you know, his ability.

He was basically free.

Like, there's a number of running backs that are around the NFL who had proven stuff that anyone could have picked up at any time, and they said, "No, no, we're gonna stick with Xavier Scott as our RB3," and I, I like Xavier a lot, I think he's a pretty good player, but I don't know that that was an option if Aaron Jones ended up as the number one either.

And then when Xavier goes and signs with another team, you're just like, "Well, I don't know what to do now.

Let's just try out every person who has two legs." I mean, I, I think that they are responsible for not having that running back because they haven't really invested in, outside of continuing to bring back Aaron Jones, and then making the trade for Jordan Mason, which I think we would all agree is good and he's a good player.

The minute the man commits to running the football, both of his running backs get injured.

There is some second-guessing to this that I think is warranted, that throughout the summer we were asking, "Are you sure about this backfield?" And my assumption was that Xavier Scott was just gonna be the guy that they trusted as the RB3, and so all right.

Well, if those two guys get injured, at least we saw Xavier Scott can get in a football game and can play and catch some passes and so forth.

But then they cut him on cut down day, maybe assuming they could get him to the practice squad, and he ends up signing in Chicago with the Bears.

So now you don't have the guy that practiced with you all summer long and played with you last year because he decided to go sign elsewhere in Chicago and look for an opportunity there, and you're left scrambling, scrambling, scrambling.

So that's a day three running back.

That's a, a project type of player.

Was there no one else along the way that you could have sort of seen it coming that you were not gonna love your RB3 situation with Xavier Scott and to go out and get someone else who was a veteran? Because they kind of went off the board there.