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ITL reacts to the AFC South games on Sunday.
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00:00Good. Let's go around the AFC South, John Lopez.
00:02Let's go around the AFC South.
00:04It was a fun weekend for AFC South football,
00:07especially when you know that the Texans already got a victory,
00:09so you could just sit and watch with your popcorn
00:11and wait to see if anybody's slipped up.
00:14You know what it is.
00:15Around the AFC South is a choose-your-own-adventure proposition.
00:18And all three teams, for the first time in a little bit, right,
00:20we've gone through the buys, but for the first time in a little bit,
00:23all three teams were playing individual opponents.
00:25They weren't playing each other.
00:27And so an opportunity to really get a feel for what these teams are.
00:30But, yes, choose-your-own-adventure.
00:31So, John Lopez, where do you want to start?
00:33I kind of want to start with the Jaguars.
00:35I kind of want to start with the Jaguars.
00:36There's some interesting stuff going on with them.
00:38All right.
00:39Let us start with the Jacksonville Jaguars,
00:42who got a victory versus the Arizona Cardinals.
00:44Only just barely.
00:46Only just barely did the Jags get their victory versus the Cardinals.
00:50That one was a 27-24 victory in overtime,
00:55in which the Trevor Lawrence thing, man,
00:58like this is the big conversation.
01:00We'll talk about some of the points within it.
01:02But Trevor Lawrence, he did throw for a lot of yards in this game.
01:07But he was responsible for all four.
01:10Yeah.
01:10All four of the turnovers that the Jaguars had in this game
01:14that allowed the Cardinals to play so damn close.
01:16Three interceptions and a fumble for Trevor Lawrence,
01:20who threw for 256 yards, three touchdowns.
01:23And, like, this just felt like quintessentially what you were looking at
01:26with Trevor Lawrence.
01:26Because he did lead, you know, an important drive in this one, right?
01:30But 18-30, at this point, it feels pretty evident.
01:35And I feel like we on the outside have felt this.
01:37I do wonder where the Jaguars are internally with a new offensive head coach,
01:42with a new general manager, where they are in their decision-making process.
01:46Where can they be?
01:47You know, they gave them a contract.
01:49I mean, what are you going to do?
01:50If I were doing radio in Jacksonville today, and thank God I am not.
01:56What, so you're not in Jacksonville?
01:57Well, I get that.
01:58Yeah.
01:58Yeah.
01:59Just being a Jacksonville is enough.
01:59I would ask you guys this question.
02:02Did the Jaguars win because of Trevor Lawrence or despite Trevor Lawrence?
02:06I mean, it's clearly in spite of him.
02:09Like, I think that that – and that's not even, like, me being just a homer
02:12and operating from, you know, Houston, Texas.
02:15Just, I mean, that is a game in which they ran the football pretty damn well,
02:20and he turned the ball over three times.
02:23And then he made some plays.
02:24He made a few of them.
02:25Yeah.
02:25Sure.
02:26And I think that, like, there's something to be said for what that offense is as
02:30well that helps them make those plays.
02:32But, no, man, I think it's a lot more – it leans a lot more towards the –
02:36in spite of him than because of him.
02:38And especially when it comes to quarterback in this league
02:40and especially once you get to that second contract of quarterback.
02:43Right.
02:43It can't be –
02:44Oh, no, he's definitely not worth the contract.
02:45It can't be the reason distribution that they're –
02:47I mean, ETN ran for 5.7 a pop.
02:51Mm-hmm.
02:5186 yards in this game.
02:53Like, Lawrence threw one interception where they panned to Liam Cohen,
02:57and he was going, like, literally palms up, like, what the hell was that?
03:01Like, what is he doing?
03:02How would you throw something like that?
03:04Yeah, that's what he was – you could just see it on his face.
03:07But, yes, 19 touchdowns and 16 interceptions, I believe, is the number.
03:12It's just a crazy, crazy thing going on up there.
03:14Yet, they have the – hell, they could win the division.
03:19They still have an advantageous way to go down the stretch.
03:23And you're right.
03:24Like, they very much could win the division with some help, obviously.
03:27But, yeah, the Jaguars' defense actually had a pretty solid game.
03:32Six sacks against Jacoby Brissett, including one in overtime,
03:35that helped stall the Cardinals' offense.
03:37Mm-hmm.
03:38So, like, they did do a little something defensively there,
03:40even though I don't know if that's much of a consideration
03:43when we're talking about the Jags.
03:44The defensive front actually did stand up.
03:46When you look at the Jags' schedule, they have two against the Titans,
03:50they have the Jets, and they still have one against the Colts.
03:53They're just an interesting team for all the reasons that we're talking about.
03:57Honestly, I feel like that's a team you will want to see in the playoffs.
04:00Excuse me, they have two against the Colts.
04:02Two against the Colts, two against the Titans.
04:04To me, I feel like that's a team you want to see in the playoffs.
04:07Like, hey, they going to spit the bit in the playoffs.
04:10That's who I want to think.
04:11You know who they are, right?
04:12Well, actually, they've done it themselves,
04:14so I can't really do too much of this.
04:15But they got a little bit of the Spider-Man meme with the Los Angeles Chargers.
04:19Yeah.
04:20Like, they feel kind of the same where, you know, you look at them and you go,
04:22yeah, I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, even if they're –
04:26I mean, this is them barely getting over 3-8 Cardinals team.
04:30Jacoby Brissett did throw for a good amount of yards,
04:33and they were able to – but, yeah, this felt weird.
04:35I mentioned ETN running for 86.
04:3745 of those were on one good pop,
04:39and then he had a 15-yard touchdown run off of that.
04:42So, like, I guess maybe that's not indicative of just how successful
04:45he was consistently in that game.
04:47But I think, ultimately, I just look at that Jags team.
04:49And now 7-4 and go, yeah, still don't feel that strong about it.
04:53Yeah.
04:53But, unfortunately, they don't have to be too strong with the schedule
04:56that you laid out ahead of them.
04:58Their next game is actually versus Tennessee.
05:01They will go to Tennessee and play them,
05:03so that's one of the things you were talking about is the schedule,
05:05not that bad for them.
05:06Somebody said Titans could beat the Colts.
05:08Who knows?
05:08Yeah.
05:09Where would you like to go next around the AFC South?
05:12Those Colts.
05:13All right, let's talk about the Colts.
05:14We mentioned this earlier.
05:16Colts take a tough loss, 23-20 in overtime versus Kansas City.
05:22The Colts get up 20-9 in this game,
05:26and part of that is the Kansas City Chiefs,
05:28their very first RPO of the game,
05:30which is one of the things that have been kind of helping them
05:32get into these RPOs.
05:33Layatu Latu.
05:35Tips it up, bats it at the line, brings it down,
05:37and damn near gets in the end zone there.
05:41That's his third interception of the year.
05:44He leads the Colts in interceptions.
05:47He's the leader?
05:49He is the leader when it comes to that team interception.
05:51Now they have a couple of dudes with a couple interceptions,
05:54and three interceptions is just about the borderline where you go,
05:58okay, that's a lot for a defensive lineman.
06:00At the same time, is that not concerning if you're a Colts fan?
06:03100% it's concerning.
06:04I think this whole game was concerning for the Colts.
06:07It wasn't necessarily like getting exposed or whatever,
06:10but there were some exposure tendencies.
06:14You mentioned Daniel Jones earlier,
06:17and certainly the way that the Chiefs controlled pretty much Jonathan Taylor,
06:24there's a template.
06:25There's a template that's been laid out to play these Colts.
06:28Amen.
06:29Man, the Kansas City Chiefs had 33 first downs in that game,
06:32which the Colts had 10.
06:36This is going to be an interesting inflection point watching them.
06:39Obviously, the Texans, seeing what the Texans are capable of doing,
06:42but watching what the remainder of the Colts' season looks like,
06:44is this the falling off point?
06:46Is this the clip that a lot of people were talking about?
06:48Because with the Colts, early on, it was like this seemingly came a little bit
06:52out of nowhere, their capability offensively.
06:55And it was enough to where there was a divide between people that were like,
06:58no, this is faux.
07:00This is a paper-soft schedule.
07:03And there was people that were like, no,
07:04it seems like this is possibly sustainable, good run game,
07:06quarterback just doing what he needs to in a play caller that's doing a great job.
07:09Now, this could be the inflection point where you go, oh, no,
07:12this is where the smoke and mirrors cease.
07:15Because one of the things I can look at, and this is something that could be fixed,
07:18but Shane Steichen went away from the run in this game,
07:20which feels like it's the foundation upon what that works on.
07:22No, and I think that would be the counterpoint.
07:24Jonathan Taylor, no matter what you think of the Colts, is not faux anything.
07:29You know, he's not faux anything.
07:31Now, the Texans might be able to learn a lot,
07:33and based on their own talents and schemes, be able to control Jonathan Taylor,
07:37but he's still going to play.
07:40You know, they play the Jaguars twice, as I just mentioned.
07:42They're going to, you know,
07:42that's going to be a very interesting couple of games right there.
07:46And then their other two games outside of division
07:48are the ones that are going to spell the difference.
07:49They go to Seattle, and they play the Niners at home.
07:52That's going to be sort of the exposure, so to speak,
07:55in terms of coming back down to earth.
07:57Yeah, so the Colts now make their way,
08:01or they will face off against the Texans.
08:04The Texans will make their way to Indy.
08:06And I have more confidence in this game than at any other point
08:11to this point in the season.
08:12The Texans seemingly trending up.
08:14The Colts, at least in this game, you could say,
08:16are trending in a way that's not necessarily good.
08:19Also, mind you, Colts were penalized 11 times in this game as well.
08:21How many times were the Chiefs penalized?
08:24I actually didn't have that in front of me.
08:26I think it's zero.
08:27They had one, which was really, it was a bad call on the Chiefs.
08:32It was like a face mask or something like that.
08:35And it clearly wasn't a face mask.
08:37It was early on in the game.
08:39But all those.
08:40Outside of that, the Chiefs were penalized seven times.
08:42Seven times.
08:43At one point I was looking at it, they hadn't been penalized yet.
08:45So I was like, okay.
08:47Yeah, they got that first one where I'm like, all right,
08:49y'all trying to beat the narrative a little bit.
08:53And just to fully lay into the idea that this offense was problematic
08:56for the Colts.
08:58In the fourth quarter in overtime, the Colts ran a total of 12 plays,
09:02went three and out each possession.
09:04Oh, yeah.
09:05Yeah, I saw that.
09:05Not only was the offense not very good, in the winning time,
09:10they didn't do very much winning.
09:12So it was a very interesting thing.
09:13On the other side of things, and we could talk about this more around the NFL,
09:16the remaining team, the Titans, I might have to apologize to the Titans.
09:20I'm not going to, but I'm saying I might should apologize to them.
09:25The 1-10 Titans versus the Seattle Seahawks.
09:28And you look at this and you go, oh, boy.
09:30You were ready to see a 55-0 game there.
09:34It took a miracle at the end of this for the Titans to not take this to overtime
09:40or anything like that.
09:41The Seattle Seahawks get a relatively narrow 30-24 victory.
09:45Titans elevator Xavier Restrepo for the first time.
09:47That was interesting.
09:48He got a couple of catches, but within this, the star of this game to some degree,
09:53I think it's Jamari Dike, who was a guy that we got a little familiar with.
09:57Ultimately, he left the last game that the Texas Titans played.
10:00A big return.
10:01He leads the NFL in kick return yards.
10:03He had a 90-yard punt return touchdown in this game,
10:06in addition to a receiving touchdown in this game.
10:09He is a real return specialist for them.
10:11They got a little something special there.
10:12This was kind of like the best loss of the year, not just because it was close,
10:17but you saw some stuff with Cam Ward, too.
10:19You need to be excited with Cam Ward if you're a Titans fan,
10:22and not as a Texans fan, but you saw some things with him.
10:26Yeah.
10:26They didn't get very much pressure, which is kind of disconcerting,
10:29because they are – I mean, we saw them.
10:30They got some of their guys back, and they didn't get very much running
10:34in the ground game.
10:36However, Cam Ward looked really good, one of the best games of his season.
10:40The numbers didn't look great, but he seemed to have a good control of the offense,
10:43got himself running a little bit, got himself a running touchdown as well.
10:4728-42, 256 yards and a touchdown, right?
10:49Yeah, and you keep your draft order.
10:51You saw some things, there's a little promise,
10:53and you still have the number one pick in the draft.
10:55Solid tank commander Cam Ward there.
10:57And they've got more of their rookies involved,
11:00which I think is probably the goal and the objective of what the Titans did.
11:03The Seattle Seahawks had some interesting stuff in there,
11:05but the Titans next will face off against the Jags at home.
11:08So the Jags will go to Tennessee, and of course the Colts will welcome
11:12the Texans this week, and that's what's happening around the AFC South.
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