Speaker 1: Throw down to Tient, snapped the golf steps off, good pocket.
Speaker 2: Throw pick up Jeremy Chits got it yet, Celebrate like
Speaker 2: it's nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: We're going to the NFL Championship Game.
Speaker 4: This is the Motown, the home of Motown to tonight
Speaker 4: they'll be playing a pool Baby.
Speaker 5: Amazing job by London Fletcher and Bram Weinstein like they
Speaker 5: did all season. At the final moment, the Commanders and
Speaker 5: their radio crew come through in the biggest way possible.
Speaker 5: The Commanders win forty five to thirty one in Detroit,
Speaker 5: and yes we have a Washington Commanders team led by
Speaker 5: Jaden Daniels going to the NFC Championship Game. I am
Speaker 5: joined by Jordan Rodrieg of the Athletic. This was not
Speaker 5: the show that I expected to be doing today. Jordan.
Speaker 5: We'll also talk Chiefs Texans a little later in the show,
Speaker 5: but this is the show that we get. And it's
Speaker 5: a reminder all season long, we've been saying this is
Speaker 5: Jaden Daniels' season, and he keeps proving it true.
Speaker 6: It's amazing and to go into Detroit and to see
Speaker 6: how unflappable he was and how like he was having
Speaker 6: so much fun. You could tell in between snaps he
Speaker 6: was having an enjoyable time with his teammates and all
Speaker 6: of that. But he was so silent on the sidelines,
Speaker 6: and they would cut to him every so often with
Speaker 6: the camera angles, and he is just sitting there, just
Speaker 6: absorbing all of this. It's like a two hundred and
Speaker 6: forty five year old man in the in the body
Speaker 6: of a kid quarterback who's a total phenom playing football
Speaker 6: and leading the Washington Commanders to history.
Speaker 7: It's incredible. It was incredible to watch.
Speaker 6: We all expected the Lions to win, so this was
Speaker 6: just absolutely incredible to watch.
Speaker 5: Yes, and he is authoring one of the greatest rookie
Speaker 5: quarterback seasons of all time. Andrew Lux was up there,
Speaker 5: Robert Griffin, the thirds was certainly up there. I wasn't there,
Speaker 5: but Dan Marinos was supposedly up there, and by all
Speaker 5: you know, the numbers show it was definitely up there.
Speaker 5: But man, this is special and it was a full
Speaker 5: team effort. It wasn't just Jende Daniels. It was a
Speaker 5: great job coaching on both sides of the ball. I
Speaker 5: think it was fitting that the game ended there with
Speaker 5: an interception by Jared Goff because Ultimately, the Lions turned
Speaker 5: the ball over five times in this game, including four
Speaker 5: by Goff, three interceptions that late, one that didn't matter much,
Speaker 5: but two killers in the first half, and also a
Speaker 5: fumble in the first half. And when the game was
Speaker 5: just going absolutely bonkers in the second quarter, it was
Speaker 5: really Golf and the Lions who blinked, the Commander's defense
Speaker 5: that made plays, and Jayden Daniels and the Commander's offense
Speaker 5: showing we can beat you fast, or we can beat
Speaker 5: you slow, will beat you any way you want to
Speaker 5: get beat, and they got beat. The number one seed
Speaker 5: is out.
Speaker 6: It's crazy, Greg, because we knew, and we've talked about this,
Speaker 6: watching all these injuries pile up for the Lions. We've
Speaker 6: been saying that, Okay, the Detroit Lions need to play
Speaker 6: at their level or at their own level that we've
Speaker 6: seen all year or above it. They need to be efficient,
Speaker 6: they need to not make mistakes. And for so much
Speaker 6: of the year, Jared Goff has played such efficient football,
Speaker 6: and this Detroit Lions team has just been a bowling
Speaker 6: ball covered in knives rolling down a hill right in
Speaker 6: your face. Any way they wanted to win, they could win.
Speaker 6: They played with their food against a lot of these
Speaker 6: sort of hapless, meandering teams that they would come up against,
Speaker 6: and you knew watching these injuries pile up that they
Speaker 6: were going to need to continue to stay at that
Speaker 6: level that confidence, sure, but also the controlled aggression, the
Speaker 6: smart decision making, and the efficiency and sound technically sound
Speaker 6: mistake free play. And if you are that team in
Speaker 6: the playoffs, when it's any game matchup against any given
Speaker 6: opponent and you're banged up like that, you cannot be
Speaker 6: Jared Goff and turn the ball over three times. Won
Speaker 6: the pick six and the other converted into a touchdown
Speaker 6: for fourteen total first half points on the side of
Speaker 6: the Commanders. That put them in a hole early, and
Speaker 6: it was really hard for them to get back out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was. And yet I don't want to put
Speaker 5: it all on the Lion's injuries. Now. Amik Robertson, who's
Speaker 5: been playing at like a Pro Bowl level level for
Speaker 5: them and was their best player in Week eighteen, got
Speaker 5: a game ball gets hurt on. I think the first play,
Speaker 5: certainly the first couple of plays, and that did set
Speaker 5: a dangerous tone. And late in the game you saw
Speaker 5: Brian Branch go out at that point they were all
Speaker 5: already trailing. But I think the Commander's efficiency, the fact
Speaker 5: that they were able to run the ball, not just
Speaker 5: Jayden Daniel scrambling early in the game. You can't really
Speaker 5: just put that all on injuries because we've seen this
Speaker 5: front and it's a pretty good front. Like play better
Speaker 5: over this stretch to me than the number one difference
Speaker 5: in each one of these games today, including the Texans games,
Speaker 5: was the two quarterbacks and the two coaching staffs plan
Speaker 5: in how they were going to handle pressure and Jade
Speaker 5: and Daniels all season long when you sent the blitz
Speaker 5: at him was just money, whether it was picking the
Speaker 5: right receiver to go after or scrambling, and a couple
Speaker 5: plays really stand out to me. We'll talk about the
Speaker 5: crazy second quarter because I just want to give the
Speaker 5: Commanders as much love as possible, but let's start more
Speaker 5: towards the end. They have a fourth and two late
Speaker 5: in the game as they're trying to go possibly ice it.
Speaker 5: They could kick a field goal to go up thirteen,
Speaker 5: and they instead decide they're going to go for it
Speaker 5: to try to go up three scores, and the Lions
Speaker 5: get what they want. They get a free rusher right
Speaker 5: at Jayden Daniels in all season long, he has been
Speaker 5: so good beating unblocked pressures, and he waits for Terry
Speaker 5: McLaurin to do his crossing pattern similar to the touchdown
Speaker 5: he caught earlier in the game, and Daniels knows exactly
Speaker 5: what to do, waits the last second, takes a hit,
Speaker 5: hits the fourth down. They also showed total confidence a
Speaker 5: cup the next drive on a third and five when
Speaker 5: some teams would maybe run the ball or be safe,
Speaker 5: and Cliff Kingsbury calls a play action pass and he
Speaker 5: hits a beautiful throw to John Bates, their backup tight end.
Speaker 5: And that's that's Jaden Daniels being the best guy on
Speaker 5: the field and being trusted by his coaches ultimately to
Speaker 5: make plays in the biggest of spots and put the
Speaker 5: game away. Because these two halfs were totally different. The
Speaker 5: second half to me was so mature out of this
Speaker 5: commander's offense.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we live in a world right now where we've
Speaker 6: been talking for years about the design and the play
Speaker 6: caller in the ear of the quarterback and sort of
Speaker 6: like using the quarterback as like you know, a video
Speaker 6: game and like you throw ball where I say to
Speaker 6: throw and like you do what I and I'm going
Speaker 6: to be the sort of mechanism behind this offense. And
Speaker 6: you rarely see, especially early in their careers, and you
Speaker 6: rarely see in this era of the NFL, just this
Speaker 6: collaboration and this beautiful trust between I mean, we've talked
Speaker 6: all this season about the revitalized quarterback, right and as
Speaker 6: it turns out, this guy playing deep or calling games
Speaker 6: deep in the playoffs is Cliff Kingsbury revitalized OC who's
Speaker 6: letting Jaden Daniels cook and giving him the keys to
Speaker 6: the convertible and really just saying I'm you know, you
Speaker 6: are empowered to do these things because you can handle it.
Speaker 6: And Daniels has not let him down at any second
Speaker 6: or not given anyone any reason to prove to say
Speaker 6: that maybe he couldn't.
Speaker 7: Handle all of that.
Speaker 6: The poise I mean, like I said, I joke, I mean,
Speaker 6: he's like a couple hundred years old internally, really like
Speaker 6: has to be. He just is so beyond what we
Speaker 6: would ever expect, not just what he's capable of doing physically,
Speaker 6: but the way that he handles a game. Like I've
Speaker 6: been to Detroit a few times in the last calendar
Speaker 6: year in that stadium, and a credit to the Detroit
Speaker 6: Lions fans, and I am sad for them right now
Speaker 6: because this was supposed to be their season in so
Speaker 6: many ways, and you could see how crushed and deflated
Speaker 6: they were. And that's another compliment to Jaden Daniels, like
Speaker 6: he held the knife man to pop the balloon, and
Speaker 6: in that stadium, in that atmosphere, that's one of the
Speaker 6: toughest places to play in the NFL to have to
Speaker 6: trust your quarterback to have that autonomy to maximize those
Speaker 6: late downs that Greg I do think made a huge
Speaker 6: difference in this game, those margins that we're going to
Speaker 6: talk about in both of these games right now. Maximizing
Speaker 6: every single down, including capitalizing off of defensive errors that
Speaker 6: the Lions made late in the game when they were
Speaker 6: still within ten points. This was a masterclass by the Commanders,
Speaker 6: even when they were hemorrhaging points early on, even when
Speaker 6: that crazy six minutes happened in the middle of the game.
Speaker 6: The unflappability of the quarterback, I think is the ethos.
Speaker 7: Of that team.
Speaker 5: Right they end up going three for four on fourth down,
Speaker 5: they get stuffed on what looked like a botch.
Speaker 6: The one that failed was when they took it out
Speaker 6: of Jaden Jenn's right.
Speaker 5: It's a snap to Marcus Mariota on the first drive
Speaker 5: of the game and looked like you might have had
Speaker 5: an option and maybe Brian Robinson didn't have the call.
Speaker 5: But I only point that play out, which feels like
Speaker 5: seventeen hours ago. I'm exhausted by this game. They had
Speaker 5: fifty seven first downs combined. I mean, it is crazy.
Speaker 5: People are going to get out Ben Johnson and Goff
Speaker 5: and everything. They had five hundred yards in this game
Speaker 5: and they were I'm definitely not getting on Ben Johnson,
Speaker 5: although that trick play at the end was curious. Too
Speaker 5: much dip on the chip, Yeah.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 5: And trusting Jamison Williams to make a good decision in
Speaker 5: that situation maybe isn't the best idea, But at that
Speaker 5: point of the game, it's like, it's hard to blame
Speaker 5: the offense when the defense is giving up so many issues.
Speaker 5: It's hard to blame the offensive ordinator. When he dialed
Speaker 5: up a couple different plays. We had a comment and
Speaker 5: if you're listening to this on Sunday, we're also doing
Speaker 5: it live on YouTube love everyone that's in the chat,
Speaker 5: and there was a comment about that people are deflated
Speaker 5: right now because it's not just the Lions fans that
Speaker 5: were a part of this journey. I really feel like
Speaker 5: it started on Sunday Night Football at the end of
Speaker 5: the twenty twenty two season when they beat the Green
Speaker 5: Bay Packers in that game that supposedly didn't mean anything
Speaker 5: for them and really got them going, got them over
Speaker 5: five hundred and then last season they get to the
Speaker 5: NFC Championship and I'm torn right now. We were talking
Speaker 5: about it before the show because on one hand, I
Speaker 5: have felt like I've been on this ride with him.
Speaker 5: You have Lions fans in your life, Cynthia Friedland, Kevin Patrick,
Speaker 5: that it's such a great football town and it would
Speaker 5: be a great story, and you just realize how hard
Speaker 5: it is to finish off one of those stories you need.
Speaker 5: Theotball got to me with you. Injuries didn't help, but
Speaker 5: having to play Jayde Daniels didn't help either. But on
Speaker 5: the other hand, like this is football, the story you
Speaker 5: didn't see coming, the rookie you didn't see coming, This
Speaker 5: guy that we're going to see for the next decade
Speaker 5: plus that's going to be such a part of our lives,
Speaker 5: God willing, Like if we're doing recaps in twenty thirty five,
Speaker 5: me and you, Jordan on NFL Daily, that's my plan
Speaker 5: that Jayden Daniels is going to be a big part
Speaker 5: of those too, And like Cliff Kingsbury getting his resurgent moment.
Speaker 5: So it's so tough you feel for Lions fans out there.
Speaker 5: And yet man, I'm suddenly thinking about Sunday. I'm thinking
Speaker 5: about could this be a Rams home game for the
Speaker 5: NFC Championship. We don't know we were.
Speaker 6: I'm in Philly. I'm in Philly right now, by the way.
Speaker 6: I'm in Philadelphia right now in the Eastern time zone.
Speaker 6: Had a cheese steak.
Speaker 7: It was great.
Speaker 6: And I it's crazy to think how much now hinges
Speaker 6: on this game to the Rams, kind of playing with
Speaker 6: house money as the Commanders are the entire way. The
Speaker 6: Commanders are so far ahead of schedule right now, and
Speaker 6: I do think there's something to be said. And I
Speaker 6: know you see this. You see the Chiefs try to
Speaker 6: shake this off all the time. They're very good at
Speaker 6: shaking this off. We're going to talk about that when
Speaker 6: we talk about the Chiefs. The Eagles had to learn
Speaker 6: how to shake this off after, you know, making the
Speaker 6: Super Bowl. The forty nine ers are still trying to
Speaker 6: figure out how to shake this off, how to de clench, right,
Speaker 6: And I think that as cool and free and as
Speaker 6: together and as well coached that we've seen the Detroit
Speaker 6: Lions be when expectations and when the stakes of what
Speaker 6: your season means not just to you guys as players
Speaker 6: and as coaches, but to the city, when you're reminded
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 7: Everywhere you go.
Speaker 6: And it's a positive thing, but it can also compound
Speaker 6: into pressure, into stakes, into tightening and tightening and tightening.
Speaker 6: And I'm not saying that's why they lost this game.
Speaker 6: I'm just saying there is an element to what happens
Speaker 6: when now you are a team with expectations.
Speaker 7: It's a double edged sword. It's a huge compliment to
Speaker 7: the Lions.
Speaker 6: Next year, it'll be a huge compliment to the Commanders,
Speaker 6: right because next year, whatever happens this year with the Commanders,
Speaker 6: we're gonna expect them to be better because they need
Speaker 6: to get better on defense.
Speaker 5: Man, do they I don't know. They just need to
Speaker 5: get through two more games where they turn the ball
Speaker 5: over on the other team five times and then they'll
Speaker 5: be Super Bowl champ. Shout out to Matt Young who says,
Speaker 5: I have aura, I appreciate that. Let's go. Let's go
Speaker 5: back to the second quarter, so I keep mentioning it,
Speaker 5: and yeah, the final score was forty five to thirty one,
Speaker 5: and the offenses went absolutely crazy on both sides, but
Speaker 5: it really was the defensive plays for the Commanders that
Speaker 5: turn this game around. And yes, we got into the
Speaker 5: fourth quarter the score was literally only seven to three,
Speaker 5: which is hard to believe. The Commanders respond with a
Speaker 5: long touchdown drive as they've been doing. Brian Robinson caps
Speaker 5: off that one, and then we get into what I
Speaker 5: would say, I guess you could have started there, but
Speaker 5: really from the eight minute stretch on in the second quarter,
Speaker 5: really really to the end of that quarter, but especially
Speaker 5: through the two minute warning, was just bananas. We're gonna
Speaker 5: go through some of those plays, and let's start in
Speaker 5: this feels so long ago, but let's start with the
Speaker 5: Gough incredible throw on the run while he's getting hit
Speaker 5: to Sam Laporta for the one handed catch.
Speaker 3: David Montgomery checks in deep back get it on a
Speaker 3: formation first and goal from the Washington Too.
Speaker 2: Golf turns fakes to Montgomery, looks, looks in trouble.
Speaker 3: Rolling right, he throws Oh what down.
Speaker 2: Detroit Ryansham Laporta just reached down with this letter horse
Speaker 2: and made the grab.
Speaker 3: What a ridiculous catch by the tight end.
Speaker 2: Gough was in trouble, being engulfed by the rush and
Speaker 2: he just threw it.
Speaker 3: And Laporta made the grab. It didn't look like he
Speaker 3: was just throwing it away.
Speaker 5: Yes, I am glad that we got Dan Miller and
Speaker 5: Lomas Brown and w X y T. I really appreciate
Speaker 5: how Jared GoF has gotten better at creative plays. And
Speaker 5: he showed the arm angle tonight and he ends up
Speaker 5: with over three hundred yards. And there were moments in
Speaker 5: this game when when he did the things that showed
Speaker 5: how he's a better got golf this season, and that
Speaker 5: was one of them.
Speaker 6: Well yeah, I mean if you look at the backward
Speaker 6: the back angle of that brow, he was getting hit.
Speaker 7: So I don't, I don't.
Speaker 6: I'm not saying this is like a bad thing, but
Speaker 6: it was a wobbler. So I really credit Sam Laporta
Speaker 6: for the catch. I mean that was insane. Was he
Speaker 6: getting buried. Was that were they burying him? They rolled
Speaker 6: him into a grape.
Speaker 5: I don't know what that what that celebration was. I
Speaker 5: need I need people to translate it for me, Like
Speaker 5: I didn't know that Jamir Gibbs was doing the catch.
Speaker 5: Was amazing celebration. At first, it was a huge commander's fan.
Speaker 5: Now I'm sure Dura is going wild.
Speaker 6: That play was extra cool and we're, you know, Commanders
Speaker 6: fans like we are going to give you so much love.
Speaker 7: I just want to we want to point out this.
Speaker 6: Was so cool because Dan Skipper was a decoy and
Speaker 6: actually he was early in Jared's progression on that play,
Speaker 6: and he pulled both linebackers Bobby Wagner and Frankie Luvu,
Speaker 6: who Frankie Luvu had a great game. Now he did
Speaker 6: have that we're going to talk about it. That hit
Speaker 6: that they were recognizing could have nullified the pick six
Speaker 6: as a touchdown and all of that. We'll get to that,
Speaker 6: but that on that play, Dan Skipper pulled both inside
Speaker 6: linebackers toward him and thereby sort of adjusting the math
Speaker 6: in some of the zones that Sam Laporta was then
Speaker 6: able to find as he was sort of doing that
Speaker 6: little scramble drill with Jared Goff who was trying to
Speaker 6: avoid pressure, and then sort of just like heaving this
Speaker 6: this wobbly pass to Sam Laporta, who then catches it
Speaker 6: with his left hand Lefty's rule with his one hand
Speaker 6: and then pulls.
Speaker 7: I mean, it was amazing. It was one of the
Speaker 7: best catches of the postseason.
Speaker 5: I mean, one of the best catches ever. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know. What I'm trying to say is remember
Speaker 5: the catch. I yeah, I'm reading this book to my
Speaker 5: son called The Hundred Greatest Football Moments. He loves it.
Speaker 5: Joe Peznanski, great great writer. And you know, the catches
Speaker 5: very high up there, and it's forever been known to
Speaker 5: catch Dwight Clark, you know, rip like an amazing play.
Speaker 5: But I used to have this bit on our old
Speaker 5: around the NFL podcast that almost every week there's a
Speaker 5: play in the NFL that's better than like any play
Speaker 5: that happened in the nineteen seventies or eighties, And like
Speaker 5: that play was that play? Imagine if you saw that
Speaker 5: what imagine if you added that play to a nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy seven game, like that would have been the catch
Speaker 5: that's how good that play was. So at that point
Speaker 5: they're up by four, you're thinking it's going back and forth.
Speaker 5: And as someone who I'll admit it like I have
Speaker 5: gotten swept up in this Lions story over the last
Speaker 5: few years, I'm thinking, this is the kind of game
Speaker 5: I think the Lions want to play, back and forth.
Speaker 5: It's gonna go way over the total. It's gonna be
Speaker 5: a high scoring game, but it's gonna end up with
Speaker 5: a final score kind of like the one we got
Speaker 5: forty five thirty one. But you just thought the Lions
Speaker 5: are more built for that. But the way that the
Speaker 5: commanders kept responding to every line's score that they were
Speaker 5: built for it. Let's go to the next drive to
Speaker 5: throw the screen pass to Terry McLaurin first to Terry.
Speaker 1: Washington curripinal forty one yard yards that the Dangels pricked
Speaker 1: through to the opposite side. Terry mcluur got through two defenders.
Speaker 2: Petifically for thirty thirty thing.
Speaker 3: Dock God tuck down walking gown, Oh my God.
Speaker 4: Like I said, you live by the bliss, you die
Speaker 4: by the bliss. The Detroit lives down up with zero
Speaker 4: bliss and they get burned back they can't Terry Well
Speaker 4: clawd oh.
Speaker 5: And that was the moment you started to think maybe
Speaker 5: Aaron Glenn needs to change his approach because you know,
Speaker 5: I see Cliff Kingsbury getting some love after that play
Speaker 5: and it's like that's just a regular old screen pass
Speaker 5: and they pop it for a fifty eight yard touchdown.
Speaker 5: That that's what That was the moment where I thought, Oh,
Speaker 5: this Lion's defense might be in some trouble that they
Speaker 5: can tackle on the perimeter and the blitzes aren't getting
Speaker 5: close to Jade Daniels.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Jaden Daniels is twelve of sixteen for one hundred
Speaker 6: and ninety one yards and a touchdown, took no sack
Speaker 6: specifically off of blitz plays, and they kept sending them
Speaker 6: and I get it, you have to find a way
Speaker 6: to get pressure on this kid, right, But like it
Speaker 6: just was sort of like it's just continuing to not work.
Speaker 6: And when we talk about Jada Daniels poise, that play
Speaker 6: happened less than a minute and a half after that
Speaker 6: huge Sam laporta Jared Goff connection play that seemingly was
Speaker 6: like Okay, here come the Lions. Jada Daniels just stayed
Speaker 6: so calm and again against that pressure that zero. Look,
Speaker 6: he executes a simple play, and everybody executes, and everybody
Speaker 6: stays calm, and everybody blocks where they need to block,
Speaker 6: and Terry mccluurin makes this.
Speaker 7: Explosive play and all of a sudden, hey, we've got
Speaker 7: a ballgame.
Speaker 5: Right, They take the lead. And then what followed what
Speaker 5: was to me the biggest play of the game. This
Speaker 5: is where we were going to lead our show. But
Speaker 5: then Golf throws an interception right at the end, and
Speaker 5: we had to get Bram Weinstein and and London Fletcher
Speaker 5: really going crazy at the final whistle. But to me
Speaker 5: that the goth pick six is where he blinked in
Speaker 5: where everyone in the city of Detroit just just gulped
Speaker 5: a little bit.
Speaker 1: Golf pointing out the defender pressure up the middle. Golf
Speaker 1: has time yours, oh picked up.
Speaker 2: Got picked up by clad Garden twenty tide Chuck Dawn touchdown,
Speaker 2: Why Dad quad Morning.
Speaker 4: And in actuate throw at least to the klond Martin
Speaker 4: tapped out eighth bound pity and swarthed into an zone
Speaker 4: of the Detroit last whoa.
Speaker 5: Great call there?
Speaker 7: They called a great game, didn't they?
Speaker 5: They just called that they've been, you know they are
Speaker 5: they are circle around the call of the year. I
Speaker 5: don't know which one it would be, but they've just
Speaker 5: been such a part of our life. I think that
Speaker 5: maybe started to give some Rams fans, maybe Lions fans
Speaker 5: at certain points started to get a little bit of
Speaker 5: flashbacks where GoF maybe just was a little I don't
Speaker 5: want to say panicked, but he had some pressure near
Speaker 5: him and he didn't react well to it and the
Speaker 5: ball sailed. And we have seen that pass from Jared
Speaker 5: Goff before, in some of his worst moments, I.
Speaker 7: Would say, and even further before that.
Speaker 6: I mean, that was a play that I think a
Speaker 6: lot of people have a version of that play sort
Speaker 6: of etched into their memory banks from a long time ago.
Speaker 7: And Jared Goff has come so far since then, let's
Speaker 7: not leave that out.
Speaker 6: But I actually think that the waterfall effect that I
Speaker 6: started to go oh no oh, like I had a
Speaker 6: bit of a flashback myself was when he lost the fumble,
Speaker 6: and that was an issue for him big time in
Speaker 6: the last part of his tenure in Los Angeles. And again,
Speaker 6: Lions fans like, yes, he is. He played amazing all
Speaker 6: this year and he's grown so much and he can
Speaker 6: do this, He can do this. That's why it seems
Speaker 6: so frustrating. I think to see these types of turnovers
Speaker 6: when the ball is sailing like that, and then you know,
Speaker 6: when he's trying to come back and make a play
Speaker 6: on the return, you know, he gets hit by Frankie
Speaker 6: Luvu and the broadcast has a discussion about it, and
Speaker 6: Mike Pereira, the rules analyst, you know, postulated that perhaps
Speaker 6: that touchdown shouldn't have shouldn't have actually counted because it
Speaker 6: should have been a foul. And that's where, you know,
Speaker 6: you can go back and forth about those types of
Speaker 6: things all the time, but certainly all elements of that moment,
Speaker 6: the pick, the reaction, then the fact that Jared Goff
Speaker 6: has to go be evaluated for it.
Speaker 5: It was your guy. I mean, defend your guy, Frankie Louva.
Speaker 5: I said it in the previous show.
Speaker 7: Every had a hell of a season.
Speaker 6: What do you mean defend my What do you mean
Speaker 6: every week I bring out an All Pro, second team
Speaker 6: All Pro should be a difference maker.
Speaker 5: I mean there were points tonight where I was like, man,
Speaker 5: they almost got to get Bobby Wagner out off the field.
Speaker 5: Because they're just they're just targeting Bobby Wagner a little bit.
Speaker 5: And Luvu is incredible, but every game there's like a
Speaker 5: Luvu cheap shot pretty much once a game somewhere. Mike
Speaker 5: Evans got it last week and he just immediately goes
Speaker 5: to the rest, like, what is this guy doing?
Speaker 6: Multiple things, Multiple things can be true, Greg, I'm just saying,
Speaker 6: I'm painting a picture of a moment, of all parts
Speaker 6: of a moment that changed a game, changed.
Speaker 7: The swing of a game. And I agree with you.
Speaker 7: I think that that.
Speaker 6: I think that that entire sequence start to finish, swung
Speaker 6: things in the almost like, oh no, this is not
Speaker 6: going to be what we thought it was.
Speaker 5: Kind of yes, And I'm half kidding about Louvu. That
Speaker 5: happens on interception returns all the time. But it was
Speaker 5: a penalty they would have had to go earn that touchdown.
Speaker 5: But everything I saw out of the Commanders tonight indicates
Speaker 5: to me they would have earned that touchdown. So I'm
Speaker 5: not going crazy about them missing the call. I just
Speaker 5: don't love that Gough took a headshot there. And you know,
Speaker 5: one of the commenters here asked, was Gough the same
Speaker 5: after that they check him for a concussion. I mean
Speaker 5: that was a hit right to his chin. He comes
Speaker 5: out of the game, and yes, the moment I've been
Speaker 5: waiting for for years. Literally, we were talking about this
Speaker 5: last year, like, what if it's a situation Not that
Speaker 5: I want Off to get hurt, but what if it's
Speaker 5: a situation where Teddy Bridgewater comes into the NFC Championship
Speaker 5: game and he has his Drew Bledsoe moment you know
Speaker 5: with the Patriots when he threw a touchdown before Brady
Speaker 5: came back in in the Super Bowl and just has
Speaker 5: that moment and he gets his Super Bowl ring. Well,
Speaker 5: Teddy Bridgewater did have a moment. He comes out there.
Speaker 5: You know, they take a penalty right away because they're
Speaker 5: not all on the same page, and you're like, oh
Speaker 5: my gosh, is this how the Lions season ends? And instead,
Speaker 5: the Teddy Bridgewater drive goes perfectly well because he doesn't
Speaker 5: have to do anything.
Speaker 3: It's on first down, Bridgewater hands and give it to Gibbs.
Speaker 3: He goes on the end around the other one table. Jamel.
Speaker 3: It's not the pooty Jamel, the fifties Jamel down to
Speaker 3: the party. So Jameson Williams turbot and so touch down
Speaker 3: the True Giants sixty one yards.
Speaker 7: You can tell how late it is for me here
Speaker 7: because I started talking.
Speaker 5: Now, don't even worry about it.
Speaker 3: I'm laughing.
Speaker 5: I'm laughing. And if you do check this out on
Speaker 5: YouTube eventually, we appreciate everyone that does and like and
Speaker 5: subscribe it. And you can see Jamison Williams just getting
Speaker 5: after it after that touchdown. I think our friend Andrew
Speaker 5: Hawkins had the tweet of the night when he said
Speaker 5: his homage to Philip Rivers after that stuff. That was ridiculous.
Speaker 5: But what play calls if if you're gonna hate the
Speaker 5: trick play by Ben Johnson at the end of the game,
Speaker 5: and I know they're different, you gotta at least appreciate
Speaker 5: the crew creativity that Ben Johnson showed I think on this,
Speaker 5: you know, certainly in that situation and in the first
Speaker 5: drive of the third quarter where it almost felt like
Speaker 5: they were hiding golf a little bit, I don't know,
Speaker 5: or at least not doing much drop back passing and
Speaker 5: they're getting touchdowns out of those drives.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was a really cool moment because Jamison Williams
Speaker 6: has been open and talked a few times with local
Speaker 6: reporters in Detroit about how big of an influenced Teddy
Speaker 6: Bridgewater was on his life.
Speaker 7: He sort of took Jameson and Williams under his wing.
Speaker 7: You know, Jamison williams.
Speaker 6: Struggles and some of his setbacks have been very public,
Speaker 6: and he said that not only did teddy Bridgewater basically
Speaker 6: teach him the offense in a way that really made
Speaker 6: sense to him, but also just kind of.
Speaker 7: Kept after him, kept him on the right track.
Speaker 6: And then part of the reason why Teddy Bridgewater came
Speaker 6: back was obviously his connection his relationship with Dan Campbell
Speaker 6: from their time together at previous stops, but also because
Speaker 6: of Jamison Williams.
Speaker 7: And so I when you talk about the.
Speaker 6: Idiocy, I guess of the last call of like, Okay,
Speaker 6: you're down ten and you're going to run a cute
Speaker 6: trick play to put the ball in Jamison Williams hands
Speaker 6: as a quarterback.
Speaker 7: You know, in that situation that's not great.
Speaker 6: But this play really I think showcased Ben Johnson at
Speaker 6: his best, which is not only are you going to
Speaker 6: are you going to call the right play in that moment?
Speaker 6: And it's a huge gain. It ends up working because
Speaker 6: everybody is bought in and executes it really well. And
Speaker 6: it's also really creative, but also it's crazy. But also
Speaker 6: it was a galvanizing type of play call when people wonder,
Speaker 6: oh is Ben Johnson like a leader of men whatever
Speaker 6: that phrase means, and like, oh, is he gonna, you know,
Speaker 6: connect with this play. That type of thing gets players
Speaker 6: with you. They ride with you because that is one
Speaker 6: of those things that you know that detail about those
Speaker 6: people involved in that play, and you're calling that specific play,
Speaker 6: putting the ball in those two hands in that moment,
Speaker 6: knowing that you need a galvanizing moment for your team
Speaker 6: in a crazy situation.
Speaker 7: And I have a lot of respect for him calling
Speaker 7: that play when he did.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it absolutely worked. It was cool to see
Speaker 5: Teddy out there. I've seen some hate sent Teddy's way
Speaker 5: that like he made a business. This is no that's
Speaker 5: what you want your backup quarterback to do. He's not
Speaker 5: blocking out there, but he's screening. He kind of got
Speaker 5: he totally got in the way, got away. So at
Speaker 5: that point you're just thinking, Okay, we need if you're
Speaker 5: a Lions fan, to have some complimentary football. It's twenty
Speaker 5: four to twenty one, this insane stretch that we started.
Speaker 5: Those four touchdowns happened in under four minutes. That's absolutely bonkers.
Speaker 5: I mean, this was the first game Jordan with four
Speaker 5: forty plus yard touchdowns in a first half since a
Speaker 5: Saints game in twenty ten, and only the sixth time
Speaker 5: in the history of the NFL that was three forty
Speaker 5: yard touchdowns in four minutes three other four like it
Speaker 5: happened that quickly, and the next drive is I think
Speaker 5: one of the moments where I was reminded, Okay, even
Speaker 5: though the lines are the team that have been there before,
Speaker 5: the commanders are are actually the ones who are as
Speaker 5: comments can be that their regular running game with Brian
Speaker 5: Robinson was working, that Jade Daniels is just picking apart
Speaker 5: the defense. And then when he threw that beautiful pass
Speaker 5: to Diami Brown, it was also just like excellence and
Speaker 5: just oh, my best is better than your best. And
Speaker 5: so that was a thirty nine yard play that set
Speaker 5: up a third down touchdown to zach Ertz where almost
Speaker 5: everyone on the field kind of knew it was going
Speaker 5: to be going to zach Ertz. But Jane Daniels gets
Speaker 5: all the time he needs, and generally that was only
Speaker 5: two and a half seconds, but the Lion's pass rush
Speaker 5: ultimately just wasn't good enough today. And Jane Daniels throws
Speaker 5: that ball before zach Ertz even makes his break, and
Speaker 5: when zach Ertz turns around, there's the ball and he's
Speaker 5: in there for the touchdown under the two minute warning.
Speaker 5: And to me, that sequence followed up by the goth
Speaker 5: interception to end the half. I know there was a
Speaker 5: long way to go, and I thought the lines could
Speaker 5: maybe come back, but man, that sequence was massive. Let's
Speaker 5: to wrap up this just a little segment here. Let's
Speaker 5: listen to the Golf interception to end the half.
Speaker 1: George, here we go. Ten Golf steps off three.
Speaker 3: In the end zone.
Speaker 2: He's pointing it out five ten pits his own man
Speaker 2: tries to get out of the tackle and could not.
Speaker 3: Walk out at the fifteen. The rookie, the Michigan man.
Speaker 7: Mike you Sandtown rookie.
Speaker 5: He's their quarterback one. And like, what a draft class
Speaker 5: by Adam Peters. What an off season for Adam Peters
Speaker 5: who forced that uh fumble? It was Doris Armstrong, which
Speaker 5: has been one of the sneaky best free agent signings,
Speaker 5: Like a three for forty five. People are like really
Speaker 5: armstrong for that, but he's been their most consistent edge
Speaker 5: rusher this year. He's been good for them. And then Sandrastill.
Speaker 5: It wasn't a good throw by Golf, maybe just a
Speaker 5: half tick late and didn't lead Williams enough. But I
Speaker 5: also give a on a credit. Was just a great
Speaker 5: play by san Ruso, who's been awesome this year.
Speaker 6: To undercut that, though, is such a high degree of
Speaker 6: difficulty a play for a play that a cornerback has
Speaker 6: to make and you have to read it perfectly and
Speaker 6: the throw has to be a little bit off even
Speaker 6: for you to make it work. Some a somewhat physically
Speaker 6: high degree of difficulty play and mentally as well, you're
Speaker 6: tracking it a long distance. And so that's that was
Speaker 6: a big time play for the rookie off. You know,
Speaker 6: a throw that just wasn't leading the receiver correctly and
Speaker 6: just the little margins. Like I said before, and to
Speaker 6: your point, I do think you know Adam Peters, and
Speaker 6: you know there's Brandon Sasna's in there, a former Lions
Speaker 6: front office guy.
Speaker 7: You know there there are connections there.
Speaker 6: As this overhaul of this top organization top to bottom
Speaker 6: from ownership into every single level and every layer of
Speaker 6: this organization has been astounding to watch. It's like it
Speaker 6: wasn't just that Sage was burned in the building. It
Speaker 6: was a full on exorcism, and like that, that's so
Speaker 6: cool that they can be so far ahead of schedule
Speaker 6: in this way after being so behind schedule in so
Speaker 6: many ways in every other facet. And it wasn't just
Speaker 6: that they got the quarterback. That's huge, they nailed that,
Speaker 6: But look at the free agents too that they brought in.
Speaker 6: You brought up Armstrong as one of them. They had
Speaker 6: a really good draft class. They brought in Austin Eckler
Speaker 6: as a leader and somebody who had really been an outlet,
Speaker 6: really be an outlet for Jade and Daniels. They brought
Speaker 6: in Frankie Lulu. They brought in Jeremy Chin who had
Speaker 6: the game ceiling play. They brought in Bobby Wagner. You know,
Speaker 6: Frankie Lulu and Jeremy Chin coming from a despondent Panthers
Speaker 6: team that nobody thought they would be good players, and
Speaker 6: here they are, Bobby Wagner leaving the charge, playing on
Speaker 6: one leg essentially tonight, but really has been solid for
Speaker 6: them and a mentor to Jade and Daniels all season.
Speaker 6: You know, this has just been a really cool team
Speaker 6: building effort where it's like they all bought in together
Speaker 6: and they grew together. They're very well coached on both
Speaker 6: sides of the ball, and they're deep at coaching on
Speaker 6: both sides of the ball as well.
Speaker 5: It's really an advertisement for the type of head coach
Speaker 5: like Dan Campbell who isn't just about scheme, because I
Speaker 5: think that's where dan Quinn's magic is. Even after that
Speaker 5: Brian Robinson touchdown in the in the second quarter, when
Speaker 5: he gets out there and he he hugs Brian Robinson.
Speaker 5: First of all, I think Robinson, you had a bad
Speaker 5: play in the first quarter on that on that mistake
Speaker 5: by Mariota. But I think dan quln't understanding that moment.
Speaker 5: There is something greater that's going on with this Commander's
Speaker 5: team than just the pickups. But the pickups were also big.
Speaker 5: Like Brandon Coleman is a rookie left tackle. He's not
Speaker 5: a great left tackle, but he's a rookie who's out
Speaker 5: there and isn't killing the team that fits well enough
Speaker 5: in their scheme and is gonna get better next year.
Speaker 5: And man, they just so many good different decisions. And
Speaker 5: look there's Commanders fans out there. You know i'd won
Speaker 5: text me late in this game, James Pittman, if you're
Speaker 5: out there, you know, my my buddy Kat who you know,
Speaker 5: it's been a listener and a fan came to the
Speaker 5: Super Bowl with me a couple of times, like what
Speaker 5: is Greg and that crew gonna start picking the Commanders? Like, Okay,
Speaker 5: I guess, I guess wait a week Like that was
Speaker 5: the moment when Goff threw that interception after that sequence,
Speaker 5: like I thought, oh, maybe the Commanders left too much
Speaker 5: time for them and they pick off Golf at the
Speaker 5: end of the half. That Wow, the Lions are in
Speaker 5: a tough way, and yet they get a three and
Speaker 5: out or they get the ball back in the second half,
Speaker 5: the Commanders allow that the Lions to go down the
Speaker 5: field in a very methodical way. It was the drive
Speaker 5: I was mentioning in the third quarter takes up almost
Speaker 5: half the quarter, and I really liked that Ben Johnson
Speaker 5: was purposeful giving the ball to David Montgomery and getting
Speaker 5: it to Gibbs and there was very few dropbacks. It
Speaker 5: was like a screen pass and a couple other and
Speaker 5: otherwise it was just their running game and Gibbs was
Speaker 5: so good in this game, and maybe they got away
Speaker 5: from them a little too much and they score the
Speaker 5: touchdown to get it to within three, and then Washington
Speaker 5: and just returns with like a fifteen play drive and
Speaker 5: they just showed they can beat you any sort of way.
Speaker 5: That drive. Yeah, it was fifteen plays, seventy yards that
Speaker 5: that's capped by the Brian Robinson touchdown. And if I'm
Speaker 5: not mistaken, that's where the Lions did have the Commanders
Speaker 5: on a fourth down inside the ten yard line and
Speaker 5: at that point in the game, Brian Branch had gone
Speaker 5: out and they get a twelve men on the field penalty,
Speaker 5: and they did. They made the bigger mistakes tonight and
Speaker 5: it was stuff like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Dan Campbell needed to call a time out.
Speaker 5: There had Tom and coaching.
Speaker 6: That's the thing is like he's been so good in
Speaker 6: the margins for so many years, even before everybody was
Speaker 6: watching this football team, right when they were really starting
Speaker 6: to pick the pieces up and start to build something like,
Speaker 6: he's been so good. Aaron Glenn has made the most
Speaker 6: out of a really decimated roster all season now I
Speaker 6: think you could argue a little bit nothing they were
Speaker 6: doing pressure wise was working, certainly not sending the blitz
Speaker 6: after Jade and Daniels, But I don't know what you're
Speaker 6: gonna do. You can't get pressure with four either, so
Speaker 6: you know, you kind of it's a mixed bag, double
Speaker 6: edged sword on that. But they've done such an admirable
Speaker 6: job for the past couple of years, but particularly with
Speaker 6: the way that they can win in the margins, the
Speaker 6: way that their players understand situational football, the way that
Speaker 6: they maximize every down, not just on offense, but opponents
Speaker 6: don't maximize those downs against them in return. Now they
Speaker 6: finally met a team that does maximize every fourth down
Speaker 6: they come across. There's no reason in Dan Quinn Cliff
Speaker 6: Kingsbury's mind, because they're ahead of schedule, because they have
Speaker 6: Jade and Daniels, because what the hell do they have
Speaker 6: to lose. They're playing with house money, like five years
Speaker 6: ahead of this rebuild, and so why not go for it?
Speaker 6: And they the Lions have not met a team with
Speaker 6: this same sort.
Speaker 7: Of like big Dan energy. They have big they had Greg,
Speaker 7: they have big Dan energy.
Speaker 5: They have Dan the Campbell. That's absolutely right. It's a
Speaker 5: good point, and I do that was a couple That
Speaker 5: was a moment where a couple of the narratives matched
Speaker 5: up the fourth down one and then you know them
Speaker 5: getting that done. But also the injuries, because I went
Speaker 5: into NGS to look at the participation on the twelve
Speaker 5: men penalty and two of the men on the field
Speaker 5: in the secondary Jordan were by the names of Stanley
Speaker 5: Thomas Oliver and Maurice Norris m O R I s C.
Speaker 5: You spelled Maurice for him. I mean they haven't those
Speaker 5: are I don't want to make the joke of like, oh,
Speaker 5: who are these guys? Have never heard of them? Like
Speaker 5: they haven't played all season. Those guys, like they literally
Speaker 5: haven't played football on the team, And you have to
Speaker 5: imagine that was part of the.
Speaker 7: That's what I said at the top. Yeah, like it
Speaker 7: just it contributed to them losing in the margins?
Speaker 2: Was there?
Speaker 7: Their injuries as much as they tried to make of it.
Speaker 5: Man, probably the probably the end of the Ben Johnson era.
Speaker 5: He did have that fun pitch shovel play which apparently
Speaker 5: was like an Antoine Randall l play back in two
Speaker 5: thousand and four, and Randall ell is now a coach
Speaker 5: for the Lions. He's the receivers coach, so that that's
Speaker 5: pretty cool, and yet just going out there playing football.
Speaker 5: The Commanders were better at it tonight. The Lions were
Speaker 5: in man coverage sixty percent of the time, which just crazy,
Speaker 5: and it just it didn't work. You couldn't do it
Speaker 5: with the players that they had on the field. That's
Speaker 5: probably it for the Ben Johnson era. Maybe that's it
Speaker 5: for the Aaron Glenn era. I wonder if Tom Brady's
Speaker 5: in the booth like happy that the Lions lost because
Speaker 5: now he can hire the rate. You're rolling your eyes,
Speaker 5: why is that?
Speaker 7: Well, don't get me started on this topic, honestly, because
Speaker 7: why not.
Speaker 5: He deserves criticism. They tried to address it. People were like, oh,
Speaker 5: I can't believe Kevin Burkhard brought that up to him.
Speaker 5: That was choreographed, like on Tuesdays.
Speaker 6: That was a choreographed way to bring it up without
Speaker 6: actually bringing it in.
Speaker 5: And he didn't answer the question like they brought it
Speaker 5: up to address it, and he didn't say anything. He
Speaker 5: just said what they do on the field is the resume,
Speaker 5: Like he didn't even answer Burkard's question.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty sure he didn't even mention. I think someone
Speaker 7: on social media was counting this.
Speaker 6: I don't even think he said Ben Johnson's name till
Speaker 6: like the third quarter when he absolutely had to and
Speaker 6: honestly like listen, like whatever if this none of this
Speaker 6: really matters in the grand scope of the world.
Speaker 7: There are much larger things going on.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, like, just sack up and
Speaker 6: talk about it, man, own you're like, yeah, you're in
Speaker 6: this position. You're not happy to be there. You're not
Speaker 6: just oh my golly gosh, like look what I get
Speaker 6: to do and I get to be in these meetings. No,
Speaker 6: it has been reported over and over again like you
Speaker 6: have an active role and that's fine.
Speaker 7: You're Tom and the face. Just own it, man, It's okay.
Speaker 6: People trust that you know what you're talking about when
Speaker 6: it comes to filling a coaching and quarterback position until
Speaker 6: you prove them otherwise. You don't need to act like
Speaker 6: all this oh shucks, like Eddie Haskell crap on the TV,
Speaker 6: like you don't have to do that anyway, Okay.
Speaker 5: No, And yeah, a couple of teams I think will
Speaker 5: be interested in the in this result in terms of
Speaker 5: being able to interview. Glenn and Johnson are possibly highing
Speaker 5: the Raiders, certainly the Saints, maybe maybe the Jaguars if
Speaker 5: they wanted to fork over the bag and fork over
Speaker 5: Trent Balk for Ben Johnson, who knows. I really do think,
Speaker 5: and it's unfortunate, but the timing of these losses can
Speaker 5: really affect the future like of of these franchises. It
Speaker 5: like Kyle Shanahan, I think his his process to becoming
Speaker 5: a head coach got got delayed a year basically by
Speaker 5: going to the Super Bowl, and just think things happened
Speaker 5: this way all the time. Man, it's gonna be a
Speaker 5: tough offseason because because the Lions, they're a little bit
Speaker 5: like the forty nine Ers now where they're going to
Speaker 5: have some of the problems that come with winning without
Speaker 5: having actually gotten to the Super Bowl in their case
Speaker 5: or winning it in the forty nine Ers case. But
Speaker 5: all credit to the Commanders. We got another whole game
Speaker 5: to talk about, so we should probably get to that
Speaker 5: game before we spend an hour on this one.
Speaker 7: What do you think happened nine hundred years ago? Yes,
Speaker 7: it happened before Jaden Daniels was born.
Speaker 5: Jaden Daniels. We pray to you at this point, you
Speaker 5: are not worthy. You are the commissioner. All right, let's
Speaker 5: take a break. We will be back on the other
Speaker 5: side with Texans Chiefs.
Speaker 3: Twelve o three to go in the game. Chief lead
Speaker 3: thirteen to twelve.
Speaker 8: They have third down and goal to go at the
Speaker 8: eleven and a half yard line of Houston.
Speaker 7: Three receivers to the right.
Speaker 3: Mahomes stepping up again, tries to throw.
Speaker 8: A light touchdown Cansas City twelve.
Speaker 3: Ish Kelsey owning this game, an eleven.
Speaker 8: Yard touchdown, playoff path to playoff.
Speaker 3: Kelsey in the Chief lead nineteen.
Speaker 5: Yes, Mitch Holtis on WDAF. If it's mid January and
Speaker 5: you have Travis Kelcey setting his personal records for postseason
Speaker 5: yards and Mitch Holtis making calls on a divisional round game,
Speaker 5: you know football is back. The Chiefs get it done
Speaker 5: in a really entertaining game, twenty three to fourteen. A
Speaker 5: frustrating game for the Texans, probably a frustrating game for
Speaker 5: a lot of America, who at this point has started
Speaker 5: to root against the Chiefs, much like they rooted against
Speaker 5: the Patriots when they were making what was it, eight
Speaker 5: straight conference championship games. I can't of all the records
Speaker 5: that I would like, you can never get broken. That
Speaker 5: one is absolutely insane. Patrick Mahomes gets it done, and
Speaker 5: he had to give us at least one beautiful highlight.
Speaker 5: And the fact that that came after or he kind
Speaker 5: of you know, faked getting hit out of bounds made
Speaker 5: everyone not appreciate in the moment. But that was a
Speaker 5: ridiculous throw as he was falling down, like he has
Speaker 5: made that kind of throw just seem absolutely ordinary.
Speaker 6: It's like that, It's like that whole like just when
Speaker 6: I'm just finally starting to get a little bit annoyed
Speaker 6: with you, you pull me right back in and I
Speaker 6: adnore you again, Like you know, you can't fault it.
Speaker 6: It's just he's he's he's great. That's greatness, and he
Speaker 6: knows how to try to sell things. He's going to
Speaker 6: use every tool in his bag to try to win
Speaker 6: football games. You don't have to agree with it. I
Speaker 6: think that that was there was a little bit of
Speaker 6: a I thought that would have kind of sucked if
Speaker 6: they would have thrown the flag. I thought that, you know,
Speaker 6: to do that after two calls clearly went your way.
Speaker 6: That I think the entire world was like, what the
Speaker 6: hell was that? But let's calm down, but listen, let
Speaker 6: me finish, let me get please, let me finish my point.
Speaker 7: Like I, it's multiple things are true.
Speaker 6: You can hate the fact that those calls their way
Speaker 6: and we're disagreed upon pretty universally, but you can also
Speaker 6: respect the fact that that guy is going to do
Speaker 6: whatever it takes to get extra yards, including some of
Speaker 6: that maximizing some of the sideline runs, maximizing some of
Speaker 6: the tools that he knows are to the advantage and
Speaker 6: are not updated in a systemic structure that is more
Speaker 6: so the league enabling things, and him maximizing the rules
Speaker 6: that he can take advantage of. And I think that
Speaker 6: multiple things can be true at the same time where
Speaker 6: you can't fault him for trying to maximize and take
Speaker 6: advantage of a system and win in every little tiny margin,
Speaker 6: which the Chiefs were better at than the Texans today,
Speaker 6: like I said before, capitalizing on those little margins, including
Speaker 6: those advantages that Patrick Mahomes has that he knows he has,
Speaker 6: and also capitalizing on special teams and capitalizing on the
Speaker 6: fact that the Texans could not stop a drop of
Speaker 6: water from going through a paper towel up front.
Speaker 5: Yeah. My thing with the flopping, and it is really annoying,
Speaker 5: is that players do it all the time in every game,
Speaker 5: like Alex Angeloni did it when Jade and Daniels pushing
Speaker 5: the quarterback tonight or whoever, like remember you remember like
Speaker 5: the I forget who was, but there was a play
Speaker 5: where Jayden Dane was kind of got up after and
Speaker 5: they were getting each other's face and it was a
Speaker 5: Lions linebacker. It was either Campbell or Angeloona like flopped
Speaker 5: down on the ground.
Speaker 6: It's like, okay, it's the quarterback. Though there are different lesped.
Speaker 5: You brought it up right right off the bat. I
Speaker 5: think it probably is the number one talking point from
Speaker 5: fans that I've seen, at least on social after the game,
Speaker 5: is just how frustrated they are with those two calls.
Speaker 5: So if we're going to start there, I do think
Speaker 5: it's important to put them put those two calls in context.
Speaker 5: The first one from the first few angles, like it
Speaker 5: was not forcible blow to the head on Mahomes and
Speaker 5: they end up getting that penalty was what the first
Speaker 5: or the second drive of the game, their second full drive,
Speaker 5: they got that first one, which was a re and
Speaker 5: out after they recover the fumball on the long kickoff return.
Speaker 5: So some breaks there for the Chiefs, but also good
Speaker 5: special teams. They get three free points on offense, and
Speaker 5: they kind of get three free points after this bad
Speaker 5: roughing call the first one it happens. It wasn't forcible
Speaker 5: blow to the helmet, but when you watched it at
Speaker 5: the right angle, like there was a little contact with
Speaker 5: the helmet, and because he was getting hit hard at
Speaker 5: the time, he did naturally like bounce back, and oh,
Speaker 5: an official made a mistake in that play. These players
Speaker 5: are the very best at what they do, and they
Speaker 5: make fifty mistakes all game every game, like mistakes happened.
Speaker 5: Patrick Mahomes made a ton of mistakes. Jared Goff made
Speaker 5: mistakes like the officialing it's impossible to do, so that
Speaker 5: like when it's something that I can understand can't be
Speaker 5: easily overturned, and I think in the future they'll be
Speaker 5: able to overturn calls like that, I actually understand. I
Speaker 5: don't think that would have been overturned because I think
Speaker 5: in the moment there was contact on the helmet and
Speaker 5: he gets hit and it's all happening fast moves fast
Speaker 5: like that probably would a stand. It's a bang bang
Speaker 5: call and they got it wrong. But that that stuff
Speaker 5: happens all the time. Why do we have no I guess,
Speaker 5: grace for them making mistakes. It's gonna happen. It happens
Speaker 5: in every sport. The next one was a terrible call
Speaker 5: where Mahomes is running around and then the two defenders
Speaker 5: you know, clash into each other. And that was a
Speaker 5: huge call in the game. But also you know, the
Speaker 5: Texans have ultimately like your defense has to be able
Speaker 5: to make a stop after that. It's really unfortunate it was.
Speaker 5: It was a big call in the game. I don't
Speaker 5: think that's the difference in the game. But I also
Speaker 5: think that being the number one story off of those
Speaker 5: two calls when one of them to be to me
Speaker 5: was like fine, like they got it wrong, but like
Speaker 5: I see wrong calls all the time. Why is it
Speaker 5: okay for like coaches and teams and players to make
Speaker 5: do a million wrong things, but like, of course the
Speaker 5: refs are going to do some wrong things, like it's
Speaker 5: part of the game.
Speaker 6: I think what people are rightfully upset about over those
Speaker 6: types of things is that there are the tools to
Speaker 6: get it right, but they're not being utilized because they
Speaker 6: just in some cases they wreck game flow.
Speaker 7: In some cases they just can't.
Speaker 6: But in other cases, like replay assists would have been
Speaker 6: really helpful on that first but they.
Speaker 5: Did so they stopped the game. They never talked about it.
Speaker 5: They stopped the game on the first one, and suddenly
Speaker 5: they were just like hemming and highing because they were
Speaker 5: didn't know what was going on, and you could tell
Speaker 5: they watched the same replay as us. They did do
Speaker 5: the replay assist and they decided not to change it,
Speaker 5: and then you got one more angle later, and I
Speaker 5: don't think they would have that one. I don't think
Speaker 5: they would have changed. So I think next year at
Speaker 5: this time that that will be a reviewable play and
Speaker 5: the second one probably would get overturned, is what I
Speaker 5: think is going to happen because of the high because
Speaker 5: of this being in such a spotlight. But I do
Speaker 5: think like replay Assist has made a huge difference this
Speaker 5: year in speeding up the game and correcting a lot
Speaker 5: of things quickly, and I just think like that is
Speaker 5: not the difference they lost this game. The difference is
Speaker 5: Patrick Mahomes was perfect against pressure and their team had
Speaker 5: a plan against pressure, and CJ. Stroud and the ten
Speaker 5: did not have a plan against pressure. Just going back
Speaker 5: to what's on the field, Like tell me if you disagree,
Speaker 5: Like that to me was the biggest difference in the
Speaker 5: defensive coaching for the Chiefs ultimately got over with their
Speaker 5: pressure packages late in the game, and that Mahomes handled
Speaker 5: the pressure that was coming his way late in the game.
Speaker 6: I just think more than one thing can be true
Speaker 6: about this game. In fact, many things are true about
Speaker 6: this game. And those calls led to points. They extended
Speaker 6: drives that led to points. I think that when fans
Speaker 6: are angry about those things because they do see the
Speaker 6: results of the extension of drives that lead to points,
Speaker 6: and those things are significant in a game.
Speaker 5: Sure, the second one it wasn't on third down or anything,
Speaker 5: so you never know what's going to happen to just
Speaker 5: be a different game.
Speaker 7: But yeah, it gives them a play.
Speaker 6: I mean, like, really, Greg, come on, man, like seriously, like,
Speaker 6: let's hold multiple things in our brain at the same
Speaker 6: time at the same time, Like the pressure that was
Speaker 6: coming at c. J. Stroud all game and in a
Speaker 6: lot of cases purely unblocked pressure there were bl and
Speaker 6: a lot of those blitz some of those blitzes were successful.
Speaker 6: But George Carl Loftis and his three sacks and his
Speaker 6: eight pressures according to next Gen and next Gen as
Speaker 6: of now, and they adjust things as time goes and
Speaker 6: they rewatch and they kind of retract different things.
Speaker 7: But he wasn't doubled. He wasn't doubled.
Speaker 6: And there were certain plays where he was chipped and
Speaker 6: where they would assign like, Okay, you have a tight
Speaker 6: end and you have a running back on you, Like
Speaker 6: we could see some of the ways that Spags was
Speaker 6: then re checking his defense into a different pressure, like
Speaker 6: right before the snap, just because of freeing up some
Speaker 6: of his players to get that extra pressure. And the
Speaker 6: Texans offensive line like did not have a ton of
Speaker 6: answers for that. And yes, I do think that that
Speaker 6: was if we're going to talk about the hierarchy of
Speaker 6: things of a game that had a lot of factors
Speaker 6: that were the reason that the Chiefs won. Another reason,
Speaker 6: and probably the biggest reason, was that pressure. And I
Speaker 6: think the second biggest reason, which we'll get to in
Speaker 6: a few minutes, is the disastrous performance on special teams,
Speaker 6: which really ended up factoring in to this game as well.
Speaker 6: So those three things, I think if we're going to
Speaker 6: rank them, I'm not going to put the calls first,
Speaker 6: of course, not like you know, logic and reason. But
Speaker 6: at the same time, that pressure was absolutely game changing
Speaker 6: for CJ. Stroud and it put him in incredibly stressful
Speaker 6: situations all game. He got banged up early on because
Speaker 6: he was trying to pick up some yards on the run.
Speaker 6: His scramble rate over the last two games has doubled
Speaker 6: since the course, since the end of the season. He's
Speaker 6: trying to pick up these plays with his legs. He's
Speaker 6: trying to avoid pressure. But he was sacked eight times,
Speaker 6: and that's just not a sustainable way.
Speaker 7: To play football.
Speaker 5: No, and the pressures weren't all equal. He got sacked, yeah,
Speaker 5: eight times, which is just preposterous. He got hit fourteen
Speaker 5: times in this game. When they first played, the Chiefs
Speaker 5: actually hit Mahomes I think twelve, thirteen, fourteen times, and
Speaker 5: today it was only eight. I mean, they got after
Speaker 5: it in parts. Some they held the Chiefs to under
Speaker 5: two hundred and fifty yards of offense. They out gained
Speaker 5: the Chiefs by over one hundred yards and didn't have
Speaker 5: a turnover. They're actually the first team I think in
Speaker 5: the history of the playoffs to outgain an opponent by
Speaker 5: over one hundred yards, not have a turnover and lose.
Speaker 5: Teams were forty nine to one, and I saw some
Speaker 5: people say, well, you can like divide up the numbers,
Speaker 5: and it's like, my friend Nick Wright was mentioning, like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm sure their success rate was great and all this stuff.
Speaker 5: It's like, no, the success rates were actually about the same.
Speaker 5: Those aren't analytics, like they just that's like as basic
Speaker 5: as it gets. They out gained them by one hundred
Speaker 5: and they didn't have a turnover. Usually that as a
Speaker 5: recipe to win, but they didn't because of what you're
Speaker 5: talking about, the margins on special teams, the margins on
Speaker 5: the sacks and the pressure, and then the margins on penalties.
Speaker 5: Like the penalty yardage was great, Jordan, given the Greeks
Speaker 5: love Carloftis was absolutely awesome. But yeah, these pressures, they
Speaker 5: weren't equal on the seventeen blitzes they blit. They pressured
Speaker 5: Stroud on what over sixty five percent of those plays,
Speaker 5: twelve pressures on those plays, eight of them were unblocked.
Speaker 5: I mean, you texted me, that's a war crime.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely true, though, yeah, and like it is like
Speaker 5: that is. The difference to me is that the Chiefs
Speaker 5: late in the second half of the game actually had
Speaker 5: a pretty good plan against pressure. Mahomes took some sacks,
Speaker 5: but he was nine to fourteen for one hundred and
Speaker 5: forty six yards when he held it over two and
Speaker 5: a half seconds, and when CJ. Stroud held the ball
Speaker 5: over two and a half seconds, the play was over
Speaker 5: and late in the game. And I know I'm rambling here,
Speaker 5: but late in the game. To me, there we do that.
Speaker 7: Greg's okay, this is our safe space for that.
Speaker 5: Okay, ten nineteen left in the fourth quarter. This is
Speaker 5: still very much a game. The Texans are driving, they
Speaker 5: have the ball at the Chiefs forty yard line, and
Speaker 5: it's still very much a game. And tech the Chiefs
Speaker 5: blitz four straight times on the Texans. Three are quick pressures,
Speaker 5: the last three are unblocked pressures, and the last one
Speaker 5: is that horrible sequence where they go for it on
Speaker 5: four and ten after the play call. And to me,
Speaker 5: that was the Texans season in a nutshell. And it
Speaker 5: was also Steve Spagnolo knowing exactly where and how to
Speaker 5: blitz and how to completely break both Bobby Slowik and
Speaker 5: c J. Stroud and set Shaq Mason and all the
Speaker 5: offensive linemen's brains and they just won right there and
Speaker 5: it was basically over at that point.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think one of the things we've seen from Andy Reid,
Speaker 6: and I want to talk about his game plan too,
Speaker 6: because even the the Chiefs only put up what twenty
Speaker 6: three points, I don't have it in front of me,
Speaker 6: and it was a million years ago. But even though
Speaker 6: they did put twenty three, Yeah, even though they didn't
Speaker 6: put up like you know, it's this crazy amount of points.
Speaker 6: I loved Andy Reid's game plan on offense. I want
Speaker 6: to talk about that in a second. I'll tell you why.
Speaker 6: But on one of the things that makes these guys
Speaker 6: so great and makes them like these long haul truckers
Speaker 6: of a team that just understand what it takes to
Speaker 6: get through those final dark miles right to their destination
Speaker 6: is the fact that they have a brilliant head coach
Speaker 6: on offense, a brilliant quarterback, but also a brilliant head
Speaker 6: coach on defense, and somebody who is going to run
Speaker 6: that entire unit as if it is its ecosystem that
Speaker 6: totally and it complements the offense in a way. But
Speaker 6: it's not like it doesn't play into what the offense
Speaker 6: needs to support the offense. It like does its thing
Speaker 6: as its own entity. And sometimes you see these teams,
Speaker 6: and especially like when the Tampa two surge was happening
Speaker 6: and it became like a lot of that deeper shell stuff.
Speaker 6: When it morphed over time from the early two thousands onward,
Speaker 6: you would see offensive coaches gravitate toward it because it
Speaker 6: would set up their offense right. It would set up
Speaker 6: their offense, it would mitigate damage via explosive plays so
Speaker 6: that the game wasn't lopsided too quickly, so that offensive
Speaker 6: player coaches could stay in their A plus plan. Steve Spagnola,
Speaker 6: Andy Reid, don't give a crap about that.
Speaker 7: They're going for it.
Speaker 6: They're going to be who they are, and they're going
Speaker 6: to be aggressive, and they're going to be smart, and
Speaker 6: they're going to be well coached and fundamentally sound, and
Speaker 6: they're going to know how to get in your head
Speaker 6: and stay there and eat your brain.
Speaker 7: And it's just cool.
Speaker 6: And that's and they just do this and they're so
Speaker 6: experienced at doing this that at a certain point, again,
Speaker 6: when you're in the in the long haul truck and
Speaker 6: the giant semi and you're on the straight line on
Speaker 6: the ten and maybe the lights in the distance start
Speaker 6: to weave back and forth a little bit, you just
Speaker 6: put your elbow up and you just go. And that
Speaker 6: is what Steve Spagnolo and Andy Reid do and do
Speaker 6: it better than almost anyone, if not anyone in the league.
Speaker 5: All Right, we got more to get to with this game.
Speaker 5: Let's just take a quick break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 5: In the first half of this game, and even at
Speaker 5: the beginning of the second half, the Texans offense was winning.
Speaker 5: We got We got a comment from Will Gavin, a
Speaker 5: regular guest of this, so say yeah and beans on
Speaker 5: toast guts, and he also asked, can someone please give
Speaker 5: Spags a job?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: And you need to break up this AFC trio. I
Speaker 5: know that is part of the Chiefs magic is they
Speaker 5: haven't broken up Spags and read you never know. Spags
Speaker 5: did get some interviews in this cycle. You never know.
Speaker 5: Matt Naggie did too, although I don't think that would
Speaker 5: really impact that the Chiefs too much. They did they
Speaker 5: did just lose their assistant GM. I don't think that's
Speaker 5: going to really hurt the bottom line to the to
Speaker 5: the Titans Mike Borganzi, so shout out to him. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I really thought at the end of that game that
Speaker 5: was that was so massive and it took a while,
Speaker 5: like it, let's be real, we went into the half
Speaker 5: with the Texans out gaining the Chiefs, with the Texans
Speaker 5: having a pretty good run game, like Bobby Slowek after
Speaker 5: eighteen games, finally did establish the run. And I don't
Speaker 5: get on him for putting them in a lot of
Speaker 5: third down situations and going to run, run, pass and
Speaker 5: didn't always work in this game, because for the most
Speaker 5: part it was working, like they did get the running
Speaker 5: game going, and you kind of have to know your
Speaker 5: personnel and look what happened when they had got into
Speaker 5: clear passing situations. If anything, you could criticize SLOK for
Speaker 5: passing their four straight times like late in the game
Speaker 5: when they should be running, because when they got the
Speaker 5: ball after halftime and they went down on what was
Speaker 5: one of their best drives of the season, a fifteen play,
Speaker 5: eighty two yard ten minute drive that ended on a
Speaker 5: mix and run after a really good fourth down pickup,
Speaker 5: like you thought they were in it, and then the
Speaker 5: special teams kicked in. Tell me about Kayimi Fairband's game,
Speaker 5: I mean that's just yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean you had to feel for him at a
Speaker 6: certain point because he's been pretty good all year. I
Speaker 6: think he only missed two kicks prior to this game
Speaker 6: all year. They lost seven points via two missed excuse me,
Speaker 6: a missed field goal, blockfield goal, a mix missed extra
Speaker 6: point that had a bad punt late in the game
Speaker 6: that gave the Chiefs field position in deep in Texans
Speaker 6: territory that.
Speaker 5: They opened right to make it two scores.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they opened the game in disastrous fashion, not just
Speaker 6: because the kickoff return was a big explosive play. They
Speaker 6: also got a penalty and then you saw just how
Speaker 6: undisciplined they planned to be in that phase all all
Speaker 6: day because Chris Boyd shoved special teams coach Frank Ross
Speaker 6: and like, I get emotions get high.
Speaker 7: Whatever you know was that? Wait?
Speaker 5: I have a theory f on that, Like do you
Speaker 5: think he was actually excited and like because he made
Speaker 5: the tackle that forced to fumble and do you think
Speaker 5: it was like I'm happy shove or I'm mad at you, Schef.
Speaker 5: I was like, I actually think he was celebrating, but
Speaker 5: I could be wrong.
Speaker 7: I think they were fired up. It's one of those things.
Speaker 6: You saw it, Remember when everyone made like a big
Speaker 6: thing about Travis Kelce and Andy Reid being all like
Speaker 6: Travis Kelsey push Dan Reid, Like sometimes people like these
Speaker 6: guys are just they can't even they're fired up. They're
Speaker 6: just two They're out of their own heads, especially on
Speaker 6: special teams. You're opening a game, you're an arrowhead. Like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm not going to read into it.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm sure people talked about a post game, so I'm
Speaker 6: not gonna put words in anyone's mouth without having seen
Speaker 6: them myself. But in those moments, you really saw, oh,
Speaker 6: they're not in this phase specifically, they're not quite ready
Speaker 6: for this moment.
Speaker 7: Whether it was a happy.
Speaker 6: Push, a fired up push, or a mad push, it's
Speaker 6: a push and they're not ready for the moment in
Speaker 6: that phase.
Speaker 7: And they lost in that phase all game long. And
Speaker 7: that was huge, a huge swing in the Chief's favor.
Speaker 6: Because I said this on social media, I was like,
Speaker 6: what do you get for the Chiefs team that has everything?
Speaker 7: Already.
Speaker 6: Well, you f up special teams in their favor, and
Speaker 6: that's really what you can give them, because they've been
Speaker 6: winning in these close games in these margins all season,
Speaker 6: and I keep saying I feel I'm still annoying.
Speaker 7: I keep saying the word margins.
Speaker 6: But they keep doing that, and they did it again
Speaker 6: here and they maximize that to the Texans detriment.
Speaker 7: And Texans shot themselves in the foot on that one.
Speaker 5: So that is how you outgained the opponent by one
Speaker 5: hundred yards and don't have a turnover and lose opening
Speaker 5: kickoff that leads to three points. There's three rate there, Fairbairn.
Speaker 5: They decide to go for it on the it was
Speaker 5: windy on that side of the field, fifty two yarder
Speaker 5: in the first half. It's six to three at that point.
Speaker 5: He doesn't even come close to that field goal. Not
Speaker 5: only do you miss miss it, there's another three points.
Speaker 5: I'm just going to write these down. That's three plus three.
Speaker 5: But the Chiefs go right down the field. That's where
Speaker 5: Kelsey gets the forty nine yard play. They cash in
Speaker 5: and score the touchdown on a short field. I'm I'm
Speaker 5: not going to count this on my special team's total,
Speaker 5: but that was situational foot right there. Fairbairn misses the
Speaker 5: extra point. You know, it's a letdown in that moment,
Speaker 5: but it's also just a point, and the points were
Speaker 5: very valuable at that point. There's another one, and then
Speaker 5: late in the game, they're trying to kick the field
Speaker 5: goal to make it one score and he hits a
Speaker 5: scud missile that gets blocked. But that's you know, you've
Speaker 5: probably talked to special teams coaches who say, like more
Speaker 5: more blocked kicks than not are on the kicker and
Speaker 5: on the kicking operation, and that was another So just
Speaker 5: on special teams, that's ten points right there. And then
Speaker 5: you also mentioned the bad punt which set up the
Speaker 5: field goal that ultimately made it two scores and kind
Speaker 5: of ended the game. So that's more points there. And
Speaker 5: these that came after the fourth and ten fire drill
Speaker 5: where they weren't prepared for the moment. There was just
Speaker 5: a lot of between special teams and then the situational coaching.
Speaker 5: There was also when they rushed to play right for
Speaker 5: the two minute warning at the end of the game
Speaker 5: and took a sack and Steve Spagnola kind of psyched
Speaker 5: out sword with what looked like a cover zero blitz
Speaker 5: and instead they drop out, Like all of this is
Speaker 5: just on the margins where the Texans weren't really ready
Speaker 5: and the Chiefs look like the team that's been there before.
Speaker 7: And the Chiefs on the other side, they kept it
Speaker 7: really simple.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, Patrick Mahomes is always going to make
Speaker 6: these astounding plays.
Speaker 7: He's the greatest we've ever seen.
Speaker 6: Do it right, and like he can do these things
Speaker 6: like that, like that touchdown pass like that just they
Speaker 6: don't make sense. They just they baffle the brain and
Speaker 6: they scramble you up, and you're like, how could anyone
Speaker 6: stop this? How could anyone think that this would go
Speaker 6: any other way? I haven't written in my notes how
Speaker 6: could any of us have ever thought this would go
Speaker 6: any other way than this? Because of what he's capable
Speaker 6: of doing. But at the same time, I loved how
Speaker 6: simple they kept their game plan. It's like the Texans
Speaker 6: have two of the best outside corners in the entire league.
Speaker 6: They're like second, first and second in limiting completion percentage
Speaker 6: of passer rating among corners this who have played who
Speaker 6: have been targeted fifty plus times into the and including
Speaker 6: into the playoffs, and like, that's Derek Stingley and uh,
Speaker 6: excuse me, I keep I always mess up his name Lassiter.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I always.
Speaker 5: Like I barely saw them today. Occasionally Derek Stinglely was on,
Speaker 5: was on Kelsey. But those are the plays they.
Speaker 6: Didn't start to forgive me Texans fans, it is twelve
Speaker 6: thirty four in the morning where I'm currently am.
Speaker 7: But they are unbelievable.
Speaker 6: They've been great all year, and to your point, you
Speaker 6: barely see them on your screen other than when Derek
Speaker 6: Seeley's like making these amazing takeaways in the Chargers game.
Speaker 7: Like you're like, oh, yeah, they're pretty dang good. They're there.
Speaker 6: But but what Andy Reid and the Chiefs did was
Speaker 6: they moved the ball toward the middle of the field
Speaker 6: where the Texans are notoriously missing a couple of safeties
Speaker 6: that they would very much have liked to have in
Speaker 6: a game like this, one of whom is playing on
Speaker 6: the other team. And also they used the screen game,
Speaker 6: and they used some of the underneath stuff, and they
Speaker 6: use some of the quick stuff that was just just
Speaker 6: a little bit of misdirection here and there, maximizing the
Speaker 6: space that they did have, and they didn't try to
Speaker 6: go outside of that plan. There was one big explosive
Speaker 6: play downfield early in the game, but at the same time,
Speaker 6: most of it was in the Most of their explosive
Speaker 6: plays and even their mid range plays happened in the
Speaker 6: middle of the field or they came off of these
Speaker 6: dynamic screens, and that was really important because if you're
Speaker 6: going to run those screens and you're going to make
Speaker 6: sure that you force those dynamic and awesome corners to
Speaker 6: come down a little bit more so, then you can
Speaker 6: attack other voids behind them, because you need those guys
Speaker 6: to tackle in space. And then if you're going to
Speaker 6: target the open areas in the middle of the field
Speaker 6: using Travis Kelce, who like somehow in the creakiest looking.
Speaker 7: Way possible, is still like putting up these great.
Speaker 6: Stat lines in must have games, right, and you're going
Speaker 6: to maximize those areas of the field because they're open.
Speaker 6: And it just really was a very simple Nobody was
Speaker 6: asked to go outside of themselves. There was a simple
Speaker 6: game plan, and everybody executed and it wasn't perfect. It
Speaker 6: was only twenty three points, but at the same time,
Speaker 6: between winning and those margins and then also executing a
Speaker 6: very simple game plan.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna put dudes where your dudes are not it
Speaker 7: was it was effective.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, twenty three points is a lot for
Speaker 5: getting two hundred and twelve yards. Two hundred and twelve
Speaker 5: yards is like bottom ten to fifteen percent of you know,
Speaker 5: an average NFL game this season. But they did get
Speaker 5: the penalty yards, they got the short fields, and yes,
Speaker 5: out of those two hundred and twelve yards, Travis Kelcey
Speaker 5: had one hundred and seventeen on seven catches, one on
Speaker 5: the long display of his postseason, the forty nine yarder,
Speaker 5: the catch and run where he beats Kylen Bullock, who
Speaker 5: who doesn't tackle there? Yeah, you mentioned the safety position.
Speaker 5: It's just such a killer for them. Jalen Petrie brought
Speaker 5: that entire secondary together, and Jimmy Ward was so valuable
Speaker 5: for them. I always mess up and say Justin Reid
Speaker 5: when I think Jimmy Ward, because they both have been
Speaker 5: so good in that Texans defense, and now Justin Reid's
Speaker 5: on the Chiefs.
Speaker 7: But like they miss Jimmy Ward back and.
Speaker 5: Jury's injuries really matter when they're clustered together. And so
Speaker 5: there's two middle of the field slot slash safety players.
Speaker 5: You know, Petrie was playing the slot this year and
Speaker 5: playing it really well. Yeah, and then there's two really
Speaker 5: dynamic wide receivers Stefan Diggs in tanked Dell and that
Speaker 5: really hurt them. The offensive line is there's no excuse
Speaker 5: for that because they've poured resource after resource into that,
Speaker 5: and to me, that's bad coaching. Laramie Tunsel was not
Speaker 5: like a plus player this year, which is a huge
Speaker 5: problem when he's one of the highest paid players in
Speaker 5: the league. Let's actually listen to the chief sacking Stroud
Speaker 5: on the fourth and tent. There's so many failed fourth
Speaker 5: downs it's like hard to keep track. But let's go
Speaker 5: to that one.
Speaker 8: Houston trying to snap it before the playcoun Here comes
Speaker 8: I rush against Stroud on fourth down and.
Speaker 5: He's gonna go down the chase.
Speaker 3: Not only hold, they get a sack.
Speaker 8: Cheorge karloft Us and Shadon Hicks also there. It's not
Speaker 8: only a hole, it's a sack and a loss, and
Speaker 8: the Chiefs will have the ball in Houston territory.
Speaker 3: A fourth down and ten loss of fourteen yards.
Speaker 5: And the Texans were heroic in this game. They actually
Speaker 5: stood up there and forced the Chiefs to punt, but
Speaker 5: that play call still mattered. I think, knowing where they
Speaker 5: were in terms of how they were playing on offense,
Speaker 5: I would have it's a rare time where I'm like,
Speaker 5: I don't think you should have gone for it on
Speaker 5: fourth down, And it absolutely mattered because that changed the
Speaker 5: field position in a game where there wasn't a lot
Speaker 5: of offensive yards and directly led, you know, to that
Speaker 5: bad punt that we were talking about by the Texans
Speaker 5: and basically ended the game. They were they were too good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the field position on some of those, including the
Speaker 6: punt and then also the fourth down there definitely helped
Speaker 6: the Chiefs out. Sheil Caapatia, who we both really like.
Speaker 6: I know, he posted on Blue Sky that of the
Speaker 6: seven real possessions the Chiefs had, they did score on
Speaker 6: five of them, two touchdowns, three field goals. So still,
Speaker 6: like you know, looked it looked uglier, right, But some
Speaker 6: of that was game flow, Some of that was possession
Speaker 6: of where they started with the ball, some of that
Speaker 6: was you know, a couple of those it just looked
Speaker 6: creaky at times, but I guess that you.
Speaker 7: Know, they're long haul truckers, man, We're going to expect
Speaker 7: this from them, and.
Speaker 5: I know that's the win football. That's one of the
Speaker 5: reasons I love football is every game is can have
Speaker 5: such a different character. And the Chiefs are so amazing
Speaker 5: at being able to play any sort of game. And
Speaker 5: the Patriots got way too much credit during their dynasty,
Speaker 5: probably just for their situational football, and the Chiefs are
Speaker 5: just so good at that because cause you're right in
Speaker 5: the end, like it's not like the Chiefs offense had
Speaker 5: like a really low success rate or anything throughout the
Speaker 5: course of the game. It dipped later in the end,
Speaker 5: but they got done mostly what they got needed to
Speaker 5: be done. But they played, they played to the score,
Speaker 5: and they did exactly what they needed to do. And
Speaker 5: you get the sense they were almost just kind of
Speaker 5: for part of the game getting a little loose, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. It was like theory, they got
Speaker 5: loose and next week they're going to play better.
Speaker 7: I have a theory.
Speaker 6: I'm not personally annoyed with the Chiefs, but I see
Speaker 6: a lot on social media, which is not really real,
Speaker 6: but you do see it, like people are annoyed with
Speaker 6: the Chiefs.
Speaker 7: But I have a theory about it.
Speaker 6: I think we're all a bit traumatized from like remember
Speaker 6: in college when like everyone was on the group project,
Speaker 6: and then you know, the person who would do just
Speaker 6: enough but not a lot more than was needed in
Speaker 6: that moment would still be a part of the a
Speaker 6: and like the overachievers would always be the ones that
Speaker 6: were getting mad. I just think that in my theory,
Speaker 6: the chiefs know how to do this, they know how
Speaker 6: to manage the project right because they're getting just enough
Speaker 6: done and it looks weird at times, and all of
Speaker 6: a sudden you look at the box score in the
Speaker 6: advanced statistics and some of the efficiency and you're like, actually,
Speaker 6: that wasn't that bad, Like you actually did You did
Speaker 6: exactly what was asked of you.
Speaker 5: You needed to do right in this week, it should
Speaker 5: work that only Travis Kelcey and Xavier Worthy had like
Speaker 5: all the catches in all the yards. By the way,
Speaker 5: Xavier Worthy made two of the best catches he made
Speaker 5: all season in this game, a contested catch early and
Speaker 5: then another one going away from him to set up
Speaker 5: a score, and a really nice throw by Mahomes, like
Speaker 5: he has absolutely stepped up. Other than that, Noah Gray
Speaker 5: went three for thirteen and then the combination of Kareem Hunt,
Speaker 5: DeAndre Hopkins who didn't have a catch, Juju Smith Schuster
Speaker 5: who didn't have a catch, Soma J. P Ryan and
Speaker 5: Isaiah Pacheco had a total of I think eight targets
Speaker 5: for two yards and they got it done. Anyways, the
Speaker 5: protection after the beginning mostly held up and they will
Speaker 5: move on. It is just it's incredible to make seven
Speaker 5: straight AFC championship.
Speaker 6: I know it doesn't it just it's almost hard to
Speaker 6: process it and it's but it's really cool to watch
Speaker 6: every other team, Greg, I talk about this with you
Speaker 6: all the time, Like every other team strains and presses
Speaker 6: and clenches and gets so tight and terribly injured. And
Speaker 6: like the Chiefs haven't been immune to injuries either, but
Speaker 6: like they seem to be immune to this burnout thing
Speaker 6: that all of these other teams get.
Speaker 5: They just got twenty five days off. I wouldn't be
Speaker 5: burnt out either.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm not talking about this season specifically, I'm talking
Speaker 6: about every year. I mean, they play longer, they play
Speaker 6: more football games on average than any other team in
Speaker 6: the NFL, and they get less time really at the
Speaker 6: end of the season to recuperate and part of it,
Speaker 6: I think is that Andy Reid is not losing some
Speaker 6: of these really high quality coordinators, and if it happens
Speaker 6: on the offensive side, he seems to just pick things
Speaker 6: up where he left off. And certainly on the defensive side,
Speaker 6: spags more than pulls his weight, if not way more
Speaker 6: than that.
Speaker 7: So I think that helps.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, I mean, especially when you
Speaker 6: have guys who are getting old and like it, and
Speaker 6: problems along the offensive line that they've had all season,
Speaker 6: and yet they just go and it's like this unstoppable
Speaker 6: force and at some point they're going to meet in
Speaker 6: a movable object and that's going to be chaos and
Speaker 6: fireworks coming up in the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 5: And you get a break or two, like a miss missed,
Speaker 5: an opposing kicker having a bit.
Speaker 6: Like a call, You get a caller two that you
Speaker 6: seem to think that you seem to think like did
Speaker 6: not matter at all in this game.
Speaker 7: But I think you get a caller too.
Speaker 5: I think it absolutely mattered. I just think it's just
Speaker 5: it's lower.
Speaker 7: It's not the only thing. I'm not saying it's the
Speaker 7: only thing. It is a thing. It's certainly not.
Speaker 5: People are people are just so tired of the quarterback thing.
Speaker 5: But it's just weird, like you're going to go through
Speaker 5: the rest of your life complaining about these calls if
Speaker 5: you keep complaining about these calls, because it's never ever change,
Speaker 5: like there will always be bad calls, Like there's always
Speaker 5: going to be bad throws. There's there's never going to
Speaker 5: be a moment where you get to the point and
Speaker 5: they'll they'll try to improve it. I think let's go,
Speaker 5: let's go more replays. I think they will expand replay review,
Speaker 5: which which will be good. We don't need to.
Speaker 6: Get and I simply let people feel their feelings.
Speaker 5: Greg, that's no, no, I am going to control their feelings.
Speaker 5: Shout out to the YouTube commentary who says, my dole
Speaker 5: hoodie is sick. By the way, when I was, you know,
Speaker 5: writing down those points, it was supposed to pay off
Speaker 5: with me adding it all up on my note card
Speaker 5: here and yes, that's just the chicken scratches of the
Speaker 5: seven miss points from fair Baron's kicks and then the
Speaker 5: three off the opening kick. Add that all up, that's
Speaker 5: ten points you know for one by nine. Of course,
Speaker 5: they took the intentional safety at the end, which was cute,
Speaker 5: and depending on where you bet on this, if you
Speaker 5: are into that sort of thing, it was either eight
Speaker 5: and a half or nine and a half, So it
Speaker 5: might have might have affected your day, and luckily doesn't
Speaker 5: affect our day because I'm not allowed to do that.
Speaker 5: The Chiefs, by the way, are the first team ever
Speaker 5: to go eight straight games without a turnover. That's a
Speaker 5: stat that I feel likes a little underrated, like in
Speaker 5: the history of the NFL, first team ever h wins.
Speaker 6: Football games that win football games. I was more concerned
Speaker 6: about Walker's emotional state. I know he's a big Texans fan.
Speaker 7: It felt bad for him.
Speaker 5: Why do you got to bring that up?
Speaker 7: Well, I felt bad. How's he doing?
Speaker 6: I think the audience, the listeners should know he took it.
Speaker 6: He took it kind of hard today, I think, right,
Speaker 6: I feel bad for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he left the room, put a blanket on his head,
Speaker 5: like yelled at us essentially for like continuing to watch it.
Speaker 5: I was like, you need to you need to handle
Speaker 5: this better, So turn the volume down, you know, with
Speaker 5: like three minutes left, I'm like, uh, they're driving, you know,
Speaker 5: on that last drive.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: Then he comes in for the the third down and
Speaker 5: they take the sack and he just like runs back out.
Speaker 7: I mean he I mean he tried to control your feelings, Greg.
Speaker 5: What Yeah, he did, he did try to control it.
Speaker 5: He was just he wanted total silence. He was so upset.
Speaker 5: And then he was talking about becoming like a Michael
Speaker 5: Pennox Falcons fan. But I was like, you can't do that.
Speaker 7: It was there, They'll get there Walker stick with them.
Speaker 5: No, he will absolutely stick with with CJ. It was
Speaker 5: just emotions in the moment. A lot of people were
Speaker 5: feeling that. And yet you know, we we knew it
Speaker 5: would be an arrowhead. We have to find out if
Speaker 5: it's going to be the Bills or the Ravens joining
Speaker 5: the Chiefs Man. We we could get to a lot more,
Speaker 5: but we shouldn't. We should We should say goodbye and
Speaker 5: let you go to sleep. I'm like, oh, we had
Speaker 5: all this other sound we had, Damiko, Ryan's complaining. It
Speaker 5: doesn't matter at this point, Jordan, thank you. This is
Speaker 5: the last time I think we're going live for the year.
Speaker 5: We will be back on Sunday though in the studio.
Speaker 5: Have fun covering Rams and Eagles on Sunday. Everyone check
Speaker 5: out Jordan's coverage at the Athletic. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 7: Thank you snowgame guys. It's going to be a snow game.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 6: I know I am prepared. I don't know how the
Speaker 6: Rams will be in the snow, but I personally. We
Speaker 6: have a great coat gloves. I will be sitting behind
Speaker 6: glass in like twenty layers. I'm sure looking soft as hell,
Speaker 6: so that's fine.
Speaker 7: But I'm excited. This should be a really good one.
Speaker 5: Yes, I am too, and we will of course be
Speaker 5: recapping that game from the studio. I'll be with Patrick
Speaker 5: Claibhn and Nick Schuk play the music. Eric, let's go please,
Speaker 5: I need to end this thing. Yes for Jordan Rodriege
Speaker 5: of the Athletic and Eric Roberts behind the glass. When
Speaker 5: the Lions are breaking America's hearts. We love you, commanders,
Speaker 5: but the Lions you still broke our hearts. Football is
Speaker 5: It's back. See you Sunday,