00:00And good morning on a victory Monday.
00:04Jim Costa, John Jansen, Heather Park, Gov and Greg behind the glass by the slimmest margin possible.
00:10A 1.0 T victory Monday, John.
00:13Oh man, I'm so glad that the Saints decided it was it was put up or shut up.
00:18We're going to win or we're going to lose.
00:20And the Lions just played that play better.
00:23They should have gone for two.
00:25I don't have any issue with their decision.
00:26You got a team reeling who had given up over 400 yards passing.
00:30But to the Lions, shocking display of competency on all three levels of their defense.
00:35They played that perfectly on the two point conversion.
00:38They did.
00:39You had a little bit of pass rush, a little pressure, so he doesn't get to sit back there and
00:43just,
00:43you know, decide where he wants to throw the ball or scramble around.
00:47And whether it was a flat, whether it was mid-range, deep, they had it all covered.
00:52You're right.
00:52It's DJ Reed is the flat defender and they run a little pre-snap and it's designed to
00:56get him kind of lost in the wash and he gets clean out to the flat, takes that away.
01:01Derek Barnes was over the middle and caused kind of that double clutch.
01:05And at that point, big boy Tyleek Williams is right there.
01:08You got to just throw the ball to number three and it's incomplete.
01:10Like every level of the defense played well in the two point conversion.
01:14The problem is they found themselves in that position up 21, nothing.
01:17We're sweating it out on a final play.
01:20Well, they wanted to make week one.
01:21I mean, week one does not a season make.
01:25So you got to make sure that you keep the fans engaged through the entire game.
01:29Like we all talk about the TV partners and hey, we don't want anybody changing the channel.
01:33So, hey, the script says make it close.
01:37Do them a solid.
01:39Help out old Fox.
01:41Uh-huh.
01:41Yeah.
01:41Well, let's see.
01:42You know what?
01:42Hey, they haven't been able to move the ball.
01:44Let's go ahead and let them complete a couple of deep passes.
01:48Star stepped up, right?
01:49Gibbs two touchdowns, St.
01:50Brown two touchdowns, game winner and hutch couple sacks.
01:52Mm-hmm.
01:54That was and it was here's what I wanted to see and I was watching the game with Teddy.
02:00I said on that very last drive, we need to see hutch come up big or a lean McNeil.
02:05The guys that you're paying the most money to up front and a lean McNeil comes through
02:08with his first sack of the season and I thought, okay, here we go.
02:11They're going to shut it down.
02:12Obviously, they didn't.
02:14But as you mentioned in the very final play of the game, they had the guys, whether it
02:18was Derek Barnes, it was DJ Reed, it was Tylee Williams' first-round pick.
02:22Those guys are the ones that have to step up when it matters most and when it mattered
02:26most, they did.
02:29And I know there's a lot of eye rolls going, well, how could they possibly go into overtime?
02:33This is a team, especially with Tyler Shuck, in the first half, he couldn't hit the broad
02:39side of a barn.
02:40Nope.
02:40Ended up throwing for 410 yards.
02:42If he does that, what does it mean for other quarterbacks?
02:45Obviously, with Josh Allen on the horizon, you've got a short week, going to play them
02:49on Thursday night in their own house for the very first time at Highmark Stadium.
02:54And by the way, the Bills looked good against the Texans.
02:56They did.
02:5636 points.
02:59And no one cares about your fantasy football team, but I was in the decision-making process
03:04of do I start him or do I start Joe Burrow for my team?
03:08Oh, it's Josh Allen, right?
03:09Well, I thought Josh Allen, okay, going against his history against the Houston Texans, not great.
03:14They're on the road.
03:15I thought, oh, the Bills will win, but maybe his numbers won't be great.
03:19So I went with Joe Burrow.
03:20Joe Burrow's team actually looked really good.
03:22He played good, but not a lot of points.
03:24Not a lot of points.
03:25You're going to start Allen on Thursday, right?
03:27Yes.
03:27Absolutely.
03:28Against this secondary?
03:29Yes.
03:30Oh, boy.
03:31Yeah.
03:31Oh, boy is right.
03:33And there were some moments where the secondary looked, okay, I could, you know, hey, good
03:38enough until you get Branch back in hopefully just three more weeks, and we have no idea
03:46about Kirby Joseph, but then there were other times you're like, can we bend the rules and
03:50get those guys back now?
03:51Mm-hmm.
03:53So, yeah, not what you want to see going against Tyler Shuck, a 410-yard passing day, it could
04:03have been worse.
04:04If he had been on, when you have a quarterback that is competent through four quarters, it
04:09does bring up some concerns, but it's still a win.
04:14Well, I'd rather have the conversations than a win.
04:16Let's get that part out of the way.
04:17There's going to be a lot to complain about because you're playing to the final play of
04:20the damn game, but yes, it's better to have these conversations than a win.
04:24Understood.
04:262-4-8-5-3-9-97-97.
04:29A victory Monday is better than the alternative.
04:31We're going to have overreact gyms at 7-0-2.
04:34TJ Lang will join us for the final hour of the show, and we'll mix in Dan Campbell's speech
04:38inside that locker room.
04:40It's always better after a win.
04:41He had three game balls, John.
04:43Uh-huh.
04:44That's what, yeah.
04:45Offense, defense, special teams.
04:47Total team effort.
04:50I was really excited about what we saw from Jameer Gibbs and how they're using him.
04:58I'm also really concerned at the same time because he's on pace after one week, right?
05:04So Hutch is on pace for 34 sacks.
05:06We know that's not going to happen.
05:08Uh, you know, Ali McNeil, he's on pace for 17 sacks, right?
05:11You can extrapolate all these different numbers.
05:13The one that I think is more accurate is extrapolating the usage of Jameer Gibbs.
05:20He's on pace for 575 snaps.
05:23Now, ultimately, does he take that kind of reps throughout the course of the season?
05:28I don't think so.
05:30He is going to be close to 500 touches.
05:33I said snaps.
05:34It's not snaps.
05:34It was touches.
05:35He's on pace.
05:36And I think it's going to be around 500 touches, which, hey, that's what we said.
05:40You know, hey, are you going to be able to sustain this level of wear and tear from your
05:47running back throughout the course of a season?
05:49Here's how I do the math on Gibbs.
05:51He had 34 touches, six of which came in overtime.
05:54I'm willing to leave those out because not every game is going to go to overtime.
05:57He had 28 touches in four quarters of play.
06:00That would be 476 touches.
06:04The second most in the history of the National Football League.
06:09You're not going to make it to the end.
06:12And then you're going to say, gear up for the postseason because this team has postseason
06:16aspirations.
06:16They're going to have to find spots to spell him.
06:20They didn't have a back, a player, carry it more than two times other than Jameer Gibbs.
06:27That's a problem.
06:28You're up 21-0.
06:29That should have been the chance to get him on ice.
06:32See, that's the other reason this is.
06:33And I know we're going to do a broader conversation, encourage, discourage.
06:37That's the discouraging part is that would have been a great game to put him up on the
06:40shelf up 21-0.
06:41We're going to get Vakie and Sailors each five carries because we're going to win this game
06:45going away because we're at home because we're a good football team.
06:49Well, and I think going into it, we didn't think this was a complete football team.
06:54Is it a good football team?
06:56We've got one to go off of.
06:58And I think we're left with still a lot of question marks.
07:02Is it a good football team?
07:04And some of it has to be determined by, do you think New Orleans is a good football team?
07:10It's a team that under Tyler Shuck last year went five and four.
07:14They won four of their last five in the winning moments of last season.
07:18And we heard from Ross Tucker last week that he thinks they're going to be the ones that
07:22actually win that division.
07:23Now it's a bad division, but you got to make the evaluation of what do you think of the
07:30saints?
07:30And maybe it just took them a half to get to where they wanted to be to get things rolling.
07:37And the lions, you could say the same thing while they came out a little bit better, but
07:41it wasn't great.
07:42What was it?
07:4314?
07:43Oh, it was at seven, nothing at halftime.
07:45They've done this for a few years now under Dan Campbell, even when they had Ben Johnson
07:49week, one was typically a slow starter.
07:52So I go back to 2023.
07:53That's the year they beat the Kansas city chiefs.
07:56They scored 21 points and one by one, right?
07:59Right.
07:59The very next year, the year they would go on to win 15 games.
08:02They won an overtime, right?
08:04That was the Rams 26 to 20, but only 20 points in regulation.
08:08These are not offensive outbursts last year on the road, crumbling a line.
08:12They lost.
08:13They only scored 13 points.
08:15So week one has been typically and historically a slow starter under Dan Campbell.
08:20To me, the bigger takeaway was the secondary and got to have it spots is a sieve.
08:24Like early, I thought first half they were doing a nice job with some blitzes, some, some
08:29blitzes from the secondary create a little bit of confusion, a little bit of havoc.
08:34Stopping the run, I think is always going to be important for this defense.
08:37But in the second half, in obvious passing situations, when the other team knows you got to send
08:41pressure because you're not getting home.
08:43The other team knows you got a bunch of old men in your secondary and they can pick, pick
08:47at and target guys.
08:48Obvious passing situations should be advantage defense.
08:51It's not advantage for our defense.
08:53When the other team knows they have to pass.
08:56That's kind of damning.
08:57It's supposed to be easier.
08:58You know, they have to pass.
08:59Pin your ears back.
09:00Kill quarterback.
09:03And they did get after.
09:04They did.
09:05But I'm saying you should be able to play better defense when a team becomes one dimensional
09:08and the Lions can't and didn't correct.
09:11They should have more.
09:12And we'll see what type of adjustments they make, you know, from week one to week two and
09:18and how Calvin Shepard is going to call the coverages because I think that's really where
09:23we're going to see.
09:24The question is, is Calvin Shepard a confident defensive coordinator?
09:27If you are, you are going to make adjustments because you learn you can only learn so much
09:34in the preseason because you're not going against the number one receivers for other
09:38teams.
09:38I know they did against Cincinnati, but not for long enough to get a sense of what are
09:44we good at and what are we not good at?
09:46You have an idea going in, but it's going to be up to Calvin Shepard to make those adjustments.
09:54Okay, now that I've seen an entire game and I've seen where we can be exposed, why were
09:58we exposed?
09:59Was it just a brain fart and somebody didn't perform as they should have?
10:04Or is it the fact that they were asking them to do something they physically can't do?
10:08That's where you've got to make the adjustments.
10:11248-539-9797.
10:13We got text pouring in.
10:14We're going to ask the question, were you encouraged or discouraged by the Lions win?
10:19An important, yes, it's a win.
10:20You'd rather have these conversations that want to know, especially last year, we learned
10:24they lost too many of these games.
10:27Let's get to the phones and the text.
10:29248-539-9797.
10:33Text says, still need a one-two punch like when they had Montgomery.
10:36Gibbs will never last a full season like this.
10:39Another says, guys, the holding on the one-yard line was the thing that's killing me.
10:44Yeah, they could have iced the game right then and there.
10:46Yeah.
10:47So, I just, that's a chance to go up two scores, kick your feet up.
10:52So, when we come back, I'm going to talk about that play.
10:55Okay, we'll do it next, 97-1.
10:5697-1.
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