00:00That was a loss that stung, no doubt about it, because it was winnable.
00:0724-22 the final in Philly. On to Dallas. Good morning, everybody.
00:14Not on to Dallas quite yet. Lots to discuss about the opener against the Eagles.
00:21The two-point play choice. We will get into the defense, which I thought was pretty damn good,
00:27if not for some of the big plays that it allowed.
00:31Yeah, other than what happened, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
00:37Yes, I know, the big plays count. But still, after what we watched last year,
00:42the defense was a completely different viewing yesterday than what we saw last year, and it was pleasant.
00:51Jaden Daniels' first game since last December needs discussion for sure.
00:55He was really good in the fourth quarter, and not so sharp for the first three,
01:00but there were probably reasons for that. The offensive line wasn't anywhere near the disaster
01:06that so many predicted, but the center did fail them on the final offensive snap of the game.
01:14Those are just a few of the highlights that I will feature and emphasize when I get to my game
01:21take
01:21starting in the next segment. There will be plenty of time for you guys to weigh in today as well.
01:27Ben Standig will join us. We'll go around the NFL.
01:30It was the highest Sunday offensively, points-wise, and yards-wise, since the merger in 1970.
01:41As I was watching the 1 o'clock window, I kept saying to myself,
01:45so much for those that say, well, defense is always ahead of offense early in the season.
01:51Yeah, it's the NFL. Don't make any predictions with any level of certainty.
01:58You'll look silly when you talk about things in August.
02:01The point totals continued into the late afternoon window, and even last night a 28-20 final
02:10between the Giants and the Cowboys. Man, the Cowboy defense did not look much improved at all.
02:17I'm going to start with this in the open, and I know it is a bit of an annual tradition
02:24slash PSA slash lecture. Sorry about this, but don't jump. It's one game, and it's the first game,
02:36which, yes, if you evaluate just this game, there was plenty to like, and there was plenty
02:42not to like about this one game. I've said this hundreds of times over the years. Week one is a
02:51major, major head fake. It is rarely an indicator or a predictor of things to come. The truth is,
02:59the first three to five weeks of the season tends to be a head fake. Teams don't figure out what
03:06they're good at and what they're not good at and how to coach around it and how to personnel around
03:12it for several games because they don't play until yesterday or Wednesday night, Thursday night.
03:20They don't play any real games. You don't learn anything about your team in August other than
03:28who you might have and who you don't have. They didn't have Laramie Tunsil. They did have Stefan
03:33Diggs. There was some good with Diggs, and there was one bad with Diggs. You cannot get wrapped up
03:41into any sort of, oh my God, the defense is going to be great. Oh my God. Allegretti on that
03:49two-point
03:49conversion proves that Adam Peters totally screwed up in letting Biotis go. It is one game. One game.
03:59You do not have to be a good team in September. You don't have to be a good team in
04:04October in the NFL.
04:06You have to win games so that if you become good, then November and December matter.
04:14So losing too many games in September and October isn't a good thing. I'm not suggesting that.
04:21And it would have been great to have gotten that one yesterday. It would have been one nut harvest,
04:28harvested, as Eddie Jordan once said. But you're not going to know much about this team for a few more
04:34games. Week one, always, always, very, very non-indicator of what is to come. Now, we can
04:46evaluate this one game. We can talk about Sonny Stiles as a first early down blitzer. We can talk
04:52about Antonio Williams, who really performed at a high level in his first game as a rookie, and we
04:58will. We can talk about the decent job overall that they did defensively playing on the other side
05:06of Philadelphia's line of scrimmage offensively. But it doesn't mean it's going to look the same next
05:12week. It's one game that we're going to talk about today. One game. One result. We will have a much
05:21better idea a month from now what this team really has the opportunity to do or not to, not to
05:30do.
05:31Let's look at this game, this game only, and not get carried away thinking it's going to look exactly
05:37the same next week or the week after. When they don't play football for nearly a year, and that's
05:43what it is, eight, nine months since they last played football, and you go out and you play football for
05:48the first time. Real football for the first time. Tackling, blocking, running, catching for the first
05:55time for not two plays, but 67 or whatever it was offensively, 70 I think offensive snaps in the game.
06:05Yeah, sometimes it doesn't look great, and sometimes you're a little bit surprised. I do want to start
06:12though with what I was the most upset with in terms of the game yesterday because I never thought they
06:20were out of it at any point. I thought the defense kept a minute. I thought that it was only
06:25a matter
06:25of time before Philadelphia maybe started to give up a little bit. They didn't give up much defensively.
06:31There wasn't a whole lot there for anybody to take, but as long as they stayed in there, hung in
06:37there,
06:37I still thought that there was a chance, and then there was a chance at the end, and Stefan Diggs
06:45did
06:45not help them with the penalty, but ultimately they were going to have to make a two-point conversion
06:50anyway, and they got that opportunity with their last touchdown. It did not cost them the game.
06:56It was stupid, okay? If you want to say it was selfish, it was that, but ultimately the defense ended
07:02up
07:02giving up a touchdown on the next drive, which made the deficit eight and made it so that they needed
07:08a
07:08touchdown and a two-point conversion on their next score, which they did have an opportunity to get.
07:14The two-point conversion really frustrated me, and I think it's a mistake so many times for people like us
07:21to question play calling. We just don't have enough information. However, it's never stopped us from doing it,
07:28and that two-point play to me was, I'm sure, number one on the list heading into the game.
07:34Usually you have multiple two-point plays. You've practiced them, and I do wonder whether or not
07:41that play was practiced with Bates, or maybe it was practiced with Chigakonkwo, who had gone out of
07:46the game. I don't know. What I do know is I don't want a play in which one of the
07:52options is John Bates
07:54on a shovel. Tom Brady said it best. At that point, it's not about the plays. It's about the players,
08:03and you've got to give your best players a chance to decide that game, and their best player is their
08:11quarterback, and they had other good players on the field, including the rookie wide receiver,
08:16Antonio Williams, who was playing well, and Stefan Diggs, who at that point started to cook Cooper DeGene.
08:24That's what I wanted. Now, again, I will tell you, it's possible that they practiced this with
08:32somebody else, so they should have gone to another play. I have yet to hear an explanation of this
08:37play. I'm assuming we may get more from Quinn on this play later today, but it, to me, appeared to
08:46be
08:46a play in which Jaden had an option. He had an option to shovel pass it to Bates or playing
08:55off
08:55the edge defender, who was 58 Hunt. He could have kept it and thrown it out into the flat to
09:03white
09:03or kept it himself and run it, but you would have had that option with him rolling left. Now,
09:10typically, and I'm not a coach, but typically, the read for the quarterback on that is the edge
09:18player. If he crashes down, no shovel. If he stays at home, you shovel it to Bates. He stayed at
09:27home.
09:28With that said, there still was an opportunity to get it to the flat, although Hunt would have
09:34disrupted the throw from Jaden, moving to his left as a right-handed passer. That's what I think
09:41happened with the play. I don't know that for sure. My major gripe is that I don't want Bates to
09:49have
09:49the ball and be an option on that last two-point conversion, unless it's like a play-action pass
09:57where the tight end that no one's thinking about gets caught up in the wash, starting on the left side,
10:03right side on a bootleg or on a play-action, and everybody's looking at Terry and Diggs and
10:09Antonio Williams, and then out in the right flat in the corner of the end zone goes John Bates wide
10:14open. Throw him that ball. That's fine. Not on a shovel. Now, the play had a chance to work
10:21if it wasn't for Ajomo, the defensive player, who made an outstanding play. You can blame it on
10:31Allegretti. And Allegretti missed the block, and he's got to do a better job. I'm not taking him
10:37off the hook. But Ajomo did an incredible job of spinning off that block as a big defensive tackle
10:45right into the shovel pass lane to stop Bates. Look, Philadelphia's good. They've been good for a
10:54while. They've got good players. They're well-coached. And yes, every season's a new season,
10:59and every week is a new week, and week one is often not much of an indicator of anything.
11:06But Mauro Ajomo is a really good player. Jalen Carter's a really good player. They have really
11:12good proven defensive players in a proven defensive scheme. The play that 97 Ajomo makes is an outstanding
11:24defensive play. There's no other way to describe it. You can also say, two things can be true,
11:31that Allegretti didn't do a good job to seal. Because if he does do a better job and anticipates
11:38the Ajomo spin and is able to cut that off, there is an opportunity for Bates with Cosme leading the
11:45way
11:45on the shovel pass. Still count me as someone that would have preferred to have seen something
11:54different. I would have preferred the options, if that was an option, to include my best players.
12:01And to not necessarily rely on Nick Allegretti to seal Ajomo. Those are really good players.
12:09Their interior is excellent. Very good. Their front seven is really good.
12:17Now, of course, the two-point conversion would have never been necessary had a PAT not been blocked
12:24by Jalen Carter, who now has, I believe it's four blocked kicks in the last three seasons.
12:31That is amazing. What a weapon that is. I was thinking about that. Why wouldn't you just have
12:37some six-foot-nine-inch dude that's somewhat athletic that could get his hands up and get
12:45a hand on a kick or two or three a season? It's such a difference maker in games.
12:53Yeah, that was a very, very difficult extra point because you would have loved to have had that one
12:59back. And no, they wouldn't have gone for two had it been 24-17 with that much time still left
13:06on the
13:07clock. You would have probably kicked there and said, we played pretty good football. Let's take
13:13this to OT and see what happens. Trying to get a defensive stop first. So much to this game. Man,
13:21there was a lot to the game, which made it enjoyable to watch, but also painful at the end because
13:2724 to
13:2822 was a winnable game. It was never, never a game in which they didn't have a shot. And I
13:36don't know
13:36about you guys, but I'm sitting there waiting for the offense to do something. And it didn't do much
13:41for three quarters, obviously. Part of that was Philadelphia's defense. No doubt. You know,
13:48you got to give the other guys credit as well. Our defense did a pretty good job,
13:52but in the fourth quarter, really starting late in the third quarter, that looked like an offense
13:58that has a chance. We'll see. Every week's a new week and week one is difficult, but they finally
14:04found their sea legs and Jaden got super hot with the help of Antonio Williams and Stefan Diggs in
14:11particular in the fourth quarter. All right. Uh, when we come back, my game take, what I liked,
14:18didn't like other observations from the 24 to 22 season opening loss counts. One will be good. Uh,
14:27I don't know if we'll be good. I shouldn't say that, but we're good until next week when Dallas
14:32is the opponent on the road after they lost their season opener, 28 to 20 to the Giants. What a
14:40weird
14:40game that was last night. You talk about a low possession game. Uh, both teams barely only had
14:46six or seven shots with the football.
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