00:00So, Seattle comes to town on Sunday, and they're a very, very good football team.
00:07And when the schedule came out in May, I was excited about Seattle and the Rams,
00:17two teams that certainly had the potential to be the two best teams on Washington's schedule,
00:22the two teams that were in the NFC Championship game last year,
00:25and probably the two best teams in football last year.
00:28One of them won the Super Bowl, one of them lost in the NFC Championship game.
00:32But honestly, if the Rams had won the NFC title game,
00:34I think they would have absolutely blown out the Patriots in the Super Bowl as well.
00:39But one of the things that I thought was a break for Washington was two West Coast teams
00:47coming into the Eastern time zone to play a Sunday game that starts at 1 p.m.
00:53Over the years, that has worked out very well for the East Coast teams.
00:58West Coast teams traveling cross-country, playing an early start.
01:04Against the number is like 64%.
01:08Like the team, the home team covers the spread.
01:13I think it's 63.7% of the time in those games.
01:17Going back, I think it's like 25 years.
01:19Now, straight up, it's more like 50-50.
01:23But still, an opportunity, I thought, to take advantage of that whole setup,
01:30West Coast coming East.
01:32Until I looked at Mike McDonald's record against Eastern time zone teams
01:39playing in the Eastern time zone city on Sundays at 1 o'clock.
01:45He's 8-0 in those games.
01:498-0.
01:51He's only lost one road game overall to an Eastern time zone team.
01:57But that game was on Monday Night Football.
02:00That was in his first year, 2024.
02:03They lost to the Lions on Monday Night Football in Detroit.
02:06Detroit is an Eastern time zone team,
02:09even though it's the far western edge of the Eastern time zone,
02:14or close to it.
02:16That's it.
02:17Every game in an Eastern time zone city,
02:21he's won except for that one.
02:23And all of the others were 1 o'clock games.
02:27By the way, he really hasn't many,
02:30he hasn't lost many road games, period.
02:32The Seahawks have been road warriors under Mike McDonald.
02:38Anyway, I thought that that was an interesting thing,
02:43because the benefit usually goes to the East Coast team,
02:48probably not with Seattle.
02:51And they are coming into this game as a team that has played phenomenal defensive football
02:57in the first two weeks.
02:58We saw the opener, the Wednesday night opener, kickoff game against the Patriots.
03:04I mean, the Patriots couldn't do anything offensively.
03:07And then last week against the Cardinals,
03:10they held Jacoby Brissett to less than 100 yards passing.
03:14He was 17 of 28.
03:1617 completions for 95 yards.
03:203.4 yards per completion.
03:22That is, more likely than not,
03:25a whole hell of a lot of checkdowns that he threw.
03:29So, get it out quickly, check it down,
03:32and then Seattle tackles very well.
03:34Meantime, Drew Locke is playing at a very, very acceptable level,
03:40if not a high level.
03:42And the discussion about Sam Darnold,
03:45I don't think he's been ruled out yet, right, Max?
03:48That hasn't happened.
03:49Not officially.
03:50It sounds like he's trending towards playing.
03:52Well, I think he's trending towards being ready to play.
03:57I actually am going to predict that Drew Locke gets the start.
04:01Why rush, if you're Seattle,
04:04why rush Sam Darnold back against a Washington team
04:08that doesn't have its starting quarterback,
04:11against a Washington defense that struggled mightily
04:14against the Cowboys in Week 2?
04:16And Drew Locke last week had a 140 passer rating
04:20and an 88.8 QBR on 19 of 26 for 235 and 3 touchdowns.
04:27I mean, he's distributing the ball very well.
04:30He did it in that game against New England.
04:32I understand it's Arizona,
04:34but I'm going to guess, and maybe I'll be wrong,
04:40maybe, you know, he's our starter,
04:41he's ready, he's healthy, he's ready to go,
04:43but it seems like it's been up in the air,
04:46and I don't know why they would feel compelled
04:49to rush Sam Darnold back
04:51when the offense is playing very well with Drew Locke
04:56and they're a defensive-led team anyway
04:58against a team that's not going to have its starting quarterback.
05:03So we'll see.
05:05One other thing just about the quarterbacks
05:09that have gone down here,
05:10the quarterbacks in Week 2.
05:11It does look like Caleb Williams will miss Monday night.
05:14That's how it's trending.
05:16I don't know how much more he will miss
05:18for the Bears against the Eagles.
05:21Jackson Dart obviously is now lost for the year,
05:24and Jaden Daniels is lost for a period of time.
05:27I don't know if we'll learn anything more today.
05:29We are keeping an eye on it.
05:31Hopefully we'll get some news today.
05:35But Ben Fox, who we've had on the show before,
05:38where Ben is the sports betting analyst at Yahoo Sports,
05:42Ben tweeted out the following yesterday.
05:45Point spread difference between starting quarterback and backup,
05:49and this is per 11 oddsmakers that he polled during the offseason.
05:55So for the three quarterbacks that were lost last week,
06:00the difference, the way the oddsmakers view the difference between the starter,
06:06as an example, Jaden Daniels, and the backup, Marcus Mariota,
06:10how many points the line, the point spread, is affected by.
06:15So you've got Jaden Daniels, Marcus Mariota, Caleb Williams, and Tyson Badgent.
06:20He's the backup.
06:21By the way, he may be banged up with a concussion,
06:25and it may be Case Keenum on Monday night.
06:28And then Jackson Dart and Jameis Winston in New York.
06:31So I kind of looked at that,
06:34and I would say that Marcus Mariota is the best of those three backups.
06:38Wouldn't you, Max?
06:39Mariota, Badgent, Jameis Winston.
06:41Right now, who would you like to have among those three as your backup quarterback?
06:45It's pretty comfortably Marcus Mariota.
06:47I think so.
06:47So the point spread difference between Jaden Daniels and Marcus Mariota
06:55for oddsmakers across the country, across the world for that matter, is five points.
07:03So Washington is currently a six-and-a-half, call it a seven-point underdog.
07:08To Seattle, they'd be a two-point underdog at home if Jaden were playing.
07:13Caleb Williams, the difference between him and Tyson Badgent is actually less.
07:19It's 4.84 points.
07:22And that is, I would think, a bigger disparity between starter and backup than Jaden and Mariota.
07:30And then Jackson Dart and Jameis Winston, the point spread difference is 2.45 points.
07:35So that's the lowest, the least impactful to the line is the Dart absence.
07:42The most impactful to the line is the Jaden Daniels absence.
07:46I actually was surprised to see that because I would have thought not only is there a big
07:54difference between Tyson Badgent and Marcus Mariota, but Caleb Williams has been getting
08:01all of the off-season love, Caleb Williams lit up in week one the Carolina Panthers to the
08:08tune of 59 points and 565 yards.
08:12But no, when it comes to the boys in the desert, when it comes to the oddsmakers, they view among
08:18those three quarterbacks Jaden Daniels to be the most valuable to the point spread.
08:25Yeah.
