00:00But looking very much forward to the Texans facing off against the Bills,
00:03if for no other reason than being the home team on a Thursday night game,
00:07especially with the Thursday night game seemingly going back to the slot fest
00:10that they have been in the history, it feels like that is quite an advantage.
00:16I understand that the line in this game is five and a half points towards the Bills,
00:22but can you just make it ugly?
00:25Is it possible that the nature of Thursday night football
00:27and the inherent benefit of not having to travel for a Thursday night game on a short week?
00:31Traveling like three and a half hours, too, at least.
00:33Yeah, it's not a short trip for the Bills coming down to Houston.
00:39So we'll see what that looks like.
00:40I see you on the Texan line making the mention of that you can spy against Josh Allen,
00:46especially because they don't have the tight end, so can you make that happen?
00:50Maybe so.
00:51But I still have real concerns about that entire spine of the defense.
00:56I mean, the spine of the defense has been if you can find a weakness.
00:59I mean, Aziz is good.
01:01Obviously, EJ has kind of been inside, outside, but I would suspect he would be the spy.
01:07Well, someone who throws up, if Petrie's healthy, throw him in there.
01:11All of those interesting concepts.
01:12And I'm not opposed to the idea of spying,
01:14especially if that allows you to play man in other circumstances and make it a little tougher.
01:18The statistic that I was kind of ruminating on that I couldn't quite get out,
01:22since week seven, which is the Bills buy,
01:26Josh Allen has completed seven of 14 passes, 20-plus yards in the air,
01:30which is, and mind you, that is the 209 yards for the most on such plays.
01:36Like, he's just, he's getting the ball downfield.
01:39So is he going to be, connect better downfield,
01:42and could that be a big detriment for the Texans?
01:44We'll see what it looks like.
01:46But Nick Casario jumped on with Payne and Pendergast,
01:49and he did, he answered a question that, I'm going to be honest,
01:52has just been, it's been, it's been gnawing at me the way that.
01:55And you're not alone.
01:56The conversations about the concussion protocol have absolutely frustrated me.
01:59Thankfully, we saw that Petrie is, was like technically limited on the designation,
02:03so it seems like he has more of a chance than CJ has to return.
02:08But this was Nick Casario when asked about what that concussion protocol,
02:11like what goes into it, how close the actual team is on all of it.
02:15We stay out of it.
02:17I mean, we let the, in that situation as well,
02:19is let the medical process kind of take care of itself.
02:22They keep us informed about the player, and he gets through, he clears this step,
02:27and then if he gets to the next step, and if he, a lot of this is all symptom-related anyway.
02:32So whatever a player is feeling or whatever he's going through,
02:36that's essentially out of our hands.
02:39D'Amico's talked about this.
02:40I've talked about this.
02:42I mean, the health and well-being of our players is the most important thing.
02:44I would say from our perspective, just the way we operate,
02:48we're never going to force a player to do something where he doesn't feel right.
02:54It's not fair to the player.
02:55It's not the right thing to do by the player.
02:58And however long it takes, it takes, and then we'll adjust accordingly.
03:02So I would say that's how we've handled it.
03:04That's how we'll continue to handle it.
03:06And I would say specific to the concussion protocol,
03:09once they clear whatever stages and steps that they go through,
03:14and then once cleared, he's completed the protocol, then he's available,
03:19then you make the decision that is in the best interest of everybody involved.
03:23That's about as good an answer as you can get from a general manager.
03:26It really is.
03:26I mean, what are you supposed to say, you know?
03:28Right.
03:29That doesn't make you feel altogether better.
03:31Oh, no, it makes me feel a lot worse all the way around.
03:33But I understand, one, I think it's cohesive and it falls in line with the MO that they have established
03:41when it comes to players and injuries just in general.
03:44I did appreciate the particular emphasis that he put.
03:46Once they're clear, once they're available, then you make a decision on what's in the best interest.
03:53And I was like, oh, there is no way in hell.
03:54There is a snowball's chance in hell that C.J. Stroud plays in this game.
03:58Because he would have to not just clear, which I think at this point there's probably a couple more opportunities to practice.
04:05One of those being Wednesday where they don't have a practice schedule,
04:07so they would have to create one in order to give C.J. Stroud an opportunity to scratch off another practice
04:13in an asymptomatic manner or what have you, actually getting contact and everything.
04:17And then they would need him to do that, then make a decision based off of how they feel.
04:21They just seem to be more cautious than would be required for him to go.
04:25So it's very much Davis Mills.
04:26Yeah, it is Davis Mills time.
04:29The other thing that I was thinking about as I'm listening to John,
04:31and this has been in the back of my mind throughout these three weeks that he's going to be out,
04:37I'm just starting to worry, just like, is this a much more severe concussion?
04:42We talk a lot about there's different levels.
04:45There's a concussion, oh, got your bell rung.
04:48Maybe you're back the next week.
04:50It's very rare in the NFL, but it has happened.
04:52And it has happened this year in the concussion protocol.
04:56They're back the next week.
04:57But then those that are two and three games, that's the kind of thing where, you know,
05:02maybe sensitive to light or whatever it may be, any possibility.
05:06It has me worried that it's just a much more severe concussion.
05:09Yeah.
05:09And I hadn't even gotten into, like, some of the thoughts about, because I think people are like,
05:14hey, man, just tough it out.
05:15It's kind of the nature of the mythos that we've built around football, all of the machismo and everything.
05:21Nick Cacero started to talk about, like, hey, you know, processing is so necessary when you're playing quarterback, right?
05:27What happens, especially with concussions being so mysterious to us in all reality?
05:33I know that we have a lot of research, but even still, I think there is an understanding that there's a lot that we don't fully understand about what's happening on the internal of all of this, right?
05:41The processing that you have to do as a quarterback.
05:43He also mentioned, like, hey, man, you've got this, you know, you've got these, a head coach, or a coach, rather, calling plays in your ear.
05:50Are you interpreting that well?
05:51Can you hear that?
05:52Does that aggregate symptoms?
05:54There's a lot of things going on.
05:55But, yeah, I don't know exactly what to do with the idea of this being longer because, again, these things are mysterious.
06:00Just because you have a concussion that does not display does not mean that it is not something that is not detrimental to you.
06:06However, it feels like, to the layman, hey, man, you have two, three-week missed off of a concussion.
06:12That's a bad concussion that very well could get worse at some point or could, you know, compound in future circumstances or situations.
06:19Yeah, this is really uncomfortable if we're talking about even the long term with C.J. Stroud.
06:24All right, speaking of injuries.
06:27Oh, gee, who are we going to talk about?
06:28Let's talk about one, Joe Mixon, who I think this might have been the clearest as the last clearest update that we got was Nick Casario on with Painted Pendergast.
06:40This was his latest update, Nick Casario on Joe Mixon.
06:44Look, I know we've been asked about this multiple times, and it's not I'm trying to be, like, evasive.
06:49It's just a very, like, gray situation.
06:51And, you know, Joe's worked at it, and there are times when he's made progress and other times when the progress has kind of stalled there a little bit.
06:59So, I mean, players in his status of situation are on the reserve list until they're not.
07:04So, you know, I mean, Joe's doing everything he can.
07:08Obviously, we're getting pretty late in the game here.
07:11So, you know, I don't want to, you know, establish any sort of expectations or, you know, I know I mean, a month ago or whatever it was,
07:18as I mentioned, we probably have a better idea here, you know, in the next three or four weeks or whatever it was.
07:23You know, I don't think we have any more clarity at this point.
07:25So, I think at this point, he's out until he's not.
07:30You know, and again, it's just a very, I would say, gray.
07:34There's kind of a lot of ambiguity, not a lot of clarity.
07:36It's nobody's fault.
07:37It's just the reality of the situation.
07:39So, I'd say that's kind of where we are.
07:43That was resignation.
07:46It's just the tone of his voice was like, well, you know, he'll be back when he's back.
07:52You know, he'll be off the list when he's off the list.
07:54And late in the game and these other things.
07:57It just sounded like a guy that is resigned to the fact that it's probably not going to happen.
08:02Yeah.
08:03Which, the idea that, hey, man, you know, there's been setbacks clearly within that.
08:10That's frustrating.
08:11I think one of the things that I keep coming back to is what the injury actually is.
08:18And with that being the case, with the idea that there was an optimism or at least some level,
08:23I don't know whether to call it optimism or if that's correct, there was some level of thought, hope.
08:28And he referenced, he goes, I know I told you guys.
08:30Right, three or four weeks ago that we'd have a clearer idea and now we're in a position where we don't.
08:34And that feels like that could really be bad for, like, the Joe Mixon future of this all.
08:39Like, of course, I don't really have very much basis besides the feel of you come in with an injury that happens somewhere away from football, right?
08:47It's a non-football injury.
08:48Something that we just, they wanted to keep it kind of general on because they didn't know what the process back would be like.
08:53And we're still in a place where we don't know what the process back looks like.
08:56Headed into week 12.
08:57Yeah, this field, well, one, we are done here for this season.
09:00Oh, yeah.
09:00Right, just if we don't have a timetable now on where he gets, where he returns to football activities
09:05and then he ramps up to be able to play football at the highest level, we're talking about, what, six weeks of football?
09:12Seven weeks of football?
09:12He's not doing all of those things, both recovering from his injury to the place where he could play football
09:18and then ramping up in seven weeks or in five weeks, which, I mean, at that point, what are you doing here?
09:23Right, and he put it in a very tactful way.
09:25He called it ambiguity.
09:27You know, we thought that he was going to get better.
09:29We'd have more clarity.
09:30Nobody's fault, but he said it's kind of ambiguity.
09:33Well, that's a really smart way to say setback.
09:37You know, so whether it was a setback in just plateauing or a setback, an actual physical setback, who knows?
09:44But, you know, he said three or four weeks, and now there's ambiguity, so that's where he is.
09:50It's not getting better.
09:51No.
09:51Just a small subsection minute that Pantapender guys had with Nick Acera this morning.
09:58We'll revisit some of them because that was the stuff that I felt I appreciated from Nick Acera.
10:03There were some things that really led me to more questions.
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