Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: My first guest covers the Reds and the Bengals with
Speaker 2: Charlie's chalkboard. You can get an email to you daily
Speaker 2: for free through Substack. Also rad him at Fox nineteen
Speaker 2: dot com. He's a regular contributor to Fox nineteen now
Speaker 2: Digital shows. We welcome in Charlie Goldsmith. Charlie I said
Speaker 2: earlier today, the more Joe Flacco talks, the more interesting
Speaker 2: I find him. I wonder what has most impressed you
Speaker 2: about him since his arrival.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that he feels like he's done this before.
Speaker 1: It's just walking around the building, the way he fits in,
Speaker 1: the way dropping back in the pocket, he seems to
Speaker 1: know exactly where to go, the way that he's turned
Speaker 1: an incredibly bizarre, for lack of a best term experience
Speaker 1: of coming into a new team and becoming a starter
Speaker 1: and just popping right up and saying all right, let's go,
Speaker 1: let's do this. And this will never be totally normal.
Speaker 1: You know, he's not gonna get a full training camp,
Speaker 1: but it feels like everyone's reached a point now where
Speaker 1: it's like, yep, we know the drill, we're rolling, We're going,
Speaker 1: this is what it's going to look like for the
Speaker 1: rest of the season.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody expects them to rush for six
Speaker 2: point two yards to carry every game from here on out.
Speaker 2: But can the run game the success they found Thursday night?
Speaker 2: Can that be replicated or is that more of a
Speaker 2: one off because of the Steelers.
Speaker 1: I went through all the runs and all the most
Speaker 1: notable runs especially, and all those plays, you can see
Speaker 1: Chase Brown just doing remarkable things. And like, Chase Brown
Speaker 1: is in Jamar Chase, But you know how, we just
Speaker 1: expect Jamar to do remarkable things every week as long
Speaker 1: as he has a quarterback who can functionally get him
Speaker 1: the ball. Well, as long as Chase Brown has a
Speaker 1: quarterback who can functionally run the offense and make defenses,
Speaker 1: you know, play certain coverages and do this and that schematically,
Speaker 1: then yeah, I think Chase Brown is a guy who's
Speaker 1: more than talented enough to break a lot of tackles,
Speaker 1: to break off one or two big runs a game.
Speaker 1: It's those explosive that really rack up the average, and
Speaker 1: that's just who Chase is. When it's any sort of
Speaker 1: functional offense. I think it wasn't even anything schematic. I
Speaker 1: just think by having Flaco Chase Brown gets to be
Speaker 1: in self again.
Speaker 2: You wrote an excellent story earlier in the week, or
Speaker 2: may have been tail end of last week about this
Speaker 2: defense being young by choice, Charlie. That feels like something
Speaker 2: a rebuilding team would do as opposed to a team
Speaker 2: and contention. Does it say more about the youth or
Speaker 2: say more about the reality of their veterans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if they wanted to, they could be starting Logan
Speaker 1: Wilson Orrin Burkes. You know Cam Taylor, BRIT's a fourth
Speaker 1: year veteran. They could be starting all of these older players,
Speaker 1: some of the veterans. You know, you look at Cam,
Speaker 1: you look at Geno Stone. I think Logan Wilson has
Speaker 1: been fined, but put them in this group as well.
Speaker 1: Just have regressed. And that's concerning for a defense that
Speaker 1: was counting on some semblance of veteran presence to lead
Speaker 1: an otherwise young unit through the hide lows, because you
Speaker 1: know Barret Carter, Demetrius Knight, Josh Newton, Volph Murphy, Samar Stewart, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, played a very poor game against the
Speaker 1: Steelers that hasn't been talked much about, but he kind
Speaker 1: of quietly got his role reduced significantly, not quite benched,
Speaker 1: but that happened with Schamorrow over the course of the game.
Speaker 1: Like that's life. When you're playing that many young players,
Speaker 1: it's about what you expect, So there should be a
Speaker 1: lot of attention on man, these veterans are letting the
Speaker 1: defense down significantly because those are the guys you thought
Speaker 1: you'd be able to count on.
Speaker 2: Charlie, you study these guys, and you've studied cam Taylor
Speaker 2: Britt for a couple of years. How do you begin
Speaker 2: to explain the fall off of a guy who at
Speaker 2: one point looked like an emerging core player to now
Speaker 2: being inactive.
Speaker 1: It's just a massive organizational loss. Like I know, I
Speaker 1: don't expect the Bengals to, you know, be in the
Speaker 1: divisional round this year. Maybe they do it for our
Speaker 1: comes back, but these are the types of developments that
Speaker 1: cost you Divisional AFC Championship game. When you have a
Speaker 1: guy who's supposed to be a corner giving you a
Speaker 1: matchup advantage against Josh Allen and it turns out doesn't
Speaker 1: even have a place on the field. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of a pitcher who just can't find the strike zone
Speaker 1: and the way that that leads to an individual I
Speaker 1: don't want to use the word spiring, but snowballing would
Speaker 1: be the word I'm going for, because then you start
Speaker 1: trying to do so much. And Cam it's just been
Speaker 1: such a hyper active player as opposed to just locking
Speaker 1: in on the fundamentals, the details. He's trying to use
Speaker 1: another baseball analogy. You know, hit an eight run homer
Speaker 1: when he steps up to the plate, and then when
Speaker 1: he's over ten, then he's trying to hit a sixteen
Speaker 1: run homer. And he keeps digging and digging and digging
Speaker 1: that hole. And you know, now today he's working on
Speaker 1: special teams. I mean, this is seemingly how it's going
Speaker 1: to be with him going forward.
Speaker 2: You also had an excellent piece about the possibilities of
Speaker 2: Jamar Chase and receptions, and I mean, if it sounds
Speaker 2: funny to say out loud, but twenty catches isn't out
Speaker 2: of the realm of possibility at a game Jays, isn't.
Speaker 1: I don't have the stats in front of me, Blake,
Speaker 1: He's already one of six players in NFL history to
Speaker 1: have two games of fourteen catches and one of eighteen
Speaker 1: players to have I believe more than like however, many
Speaker 1: games of ten plus catches, but he's already proven that
Speaker 1: he can get the ball as well as any receiver
Speaker 1: in the history of the league at that level on
Speaker 1: a consistent basis. Sixty catches on Thursday, there were two
Speaker 1: catches overturned by replay, there were two so called drops,
Speaker 1: there were two defensive pass interference, Like he legitimately could
Speaker 1: have gotten twenty four catches. It was a really like
Speaker 1: they're all fun, but this was a really fun story work,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted our asking people how many could
Speaker 1: Jamark get, like twenty twenty five? Thirty? Oh cool? Thirty
Speaker 1: was crazy. My answer after doing this deep dive and
Speaker 1: talking to people is twenty five. Part of that too,
Speaker 1: is the big thing with Jamar this year is they've
Speaker 1: remade the screen game and that's really helped him.
Speaker 2: You have the you've had your finger on the on
Speaker 2: the pulse of this team through ups and downs over
Speaker 2: the years. I wonder about the vibe now and the
Speaker 2: is there a true sense of found juice and now
Speaker 2: possibilities for this team.
Speaker 1: I think that's the power of Flacco just in terms
Speaker 1: of everyone feels like they can do their job again
Speaker 1: and operate in exactly the way I was described with
Speaker 1: Chase Brown. But I also want to be a little
Speaker 1: cautious too, because, like you know, Joe Fla will look
Speaker 1: like twenty twelve Joe flaccol the other day. He's still
Speaker 1: going to take a lot of stats. He's still going
Speaker 1: to abandon downs by throwing the ball away too quickly.
Speaker 1: Turnovers have been his biggest problem over the last few seasons.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen any yet, and that will probably come.
Speaker 1: So you know, Flacco's probably what the twenty fifth ish
Speaker 1: best quarterback in football, and he's performed at the top
Speaker 1: ten level over the last couple of weeks. So you
Speaker 1: have some concern as the pass rushers get more daunting,
Speaker 1: as you face some sticky secondaries, as Slacker himself just
Speaker 1: has games where he's not humming, where he's not rolling.
Speaker 1: That's something they'll have to guard against. That will be
Speaker 1: the challenge they face during the second half of the season.
Speaker 1: But right now, Flacco has brought juice back to an
Speaker 1: organization that had no juice, and that is worth a lot.
Speaker 2: Try to I gotta drop a reds question too before
Speaker 2: I let your run always great catch it up. I
Speaker 2: talked to La last night. I'll ask you what, in
Speaker 2: your mind, what is Elie's best position for him and
Speaker 2: this team in twenty twenty six, And do you get
Speaker 2: a sense that is an internal conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a conversation. I'm going to be at the
Speaker 1: GM meetings in a couple of weeks, and that's my
Speaker 1: number one question because you know, when I asked a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks though, I think those conversations hadn't yet
Speaker 1: been had. I think the underdiscussed Sure, you could very
Speaker 1: well talk me into Elie playing center, but the underdiscussed
Speaker 1: part of this is where the heck with the then
Speaker 1: find another middle endfielder because Edwin Oriyo. We like Edwin Arroyo,
Speaker 1: but the plan would not be to just plug Edwin
Speaker 1: into a spot in twenty twenty six. We like Avin
Speaker 1: Lux you know, I think he's a polished hitter, but
Speaker 1: the limitation t show defensively. The plan would not be
Speaker 1: McLain at short, luckst second, you know, is it Stewart
Speaker 1: at second? Like? Where are you finding that second basement?
Speaker 1: If the Reds can find that and target that and
Speaker 1: move pieces around and get Elliot center, Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you could talk me into that. You can also talk
Speaker 1: me into the fact that they just don't have a
Speaker 1: way to find realistically that type of player. So the
Speaker 1: best combination that they can come up with still when
Speaker 1: include Elliot's short We'll see, you know, we'll see. I
Speaker 1: think it's just the true answer on that, the most
Speaker 1: accurate thing I can report, and we'll see how the
Speaker 1: market unfolds.
Speaker 2: Charlie, tell everybody what you've got cooking and where they
Speaker 2: can read watch follow along?
Speaker 1: You hit it off the top Charlie Stockboard, substat Fox nineteen.
Speaker 1: It's it's a fun time of year ago, you know.
Speaker 1: So with the Bengals, we know who they are. Again
Speaker 1: I mentioned some Reds off season stuff. So thanks for
Speaker 1: having me.
Speaker 2: You got it. Always good catching up. Hope we can
Speaker 2: do it again soon.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: There you go, Charlie Goldsmith Charlie's Chalkboard. How about that
Speaker 2: for a jam packed, informative ten minutes plus with Charlie
Speaker 2: G very much enjoy it.