On this episode of the Weak-Side Podcast, Conor and Jenny debate the motivating factor behind Aaron Rodgers's reemergence; discuss the early-season crises of two of our bird teams, the Eagles and the Falcons; and invite you to join us next week on our all-new Weak-Side Podcast feed.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Hello, and welcome back to the week Side Podcast. We have a lot to get to in week three of the NFL action, a lot to discuss, Connor. But first off the top, we want to let all of our listeners know that starting next week, the week Side Podcast will have a new home. We'll have a separate feed, So to find it next week, please search on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your shows for the week Side Podcast, you can find it that way. We will also have some fresh cover art and some opening and exit music from a talented musician in Nashville, So we have a lot to look forward to, right Connor, Jenny, this is like, this is the podcast equivalent of moving out of mom and dad's house, and we're doing it. You know, who know who knows what's going to happen. You know, maybe we'll get a CD apartment downtown or maybe you know, maybe we're moving on up and we just don't know. So it's very exciting. I was going to analogize that to a team that finds its identity in Week four of the NFL season, so maybe the Houston Texans or the Minnesota Vikings. Oh and three teams that are playing each other this week. Somebody's going to win. Maybe we're one of those. It just we all hit our stride a little late. But once we get going things are great. Or it would be like if Sofi Stadium wasn't done until week four, right, and now we're moving in. So we're here, but I'm very excited. Nothing's going to change in terms of you know, Jenny and I will still be in your feed once a week. We're just kind of breaking up all the different MMQB podcasts, so everything you love. Albert's going to have his own feed, that Gary shows on Monday is going to have its own feed, So everybody's going to kind of have their own, um unique channel there for you to find everybody, so that way you can kind of customize what you want mix and match. But please continue to make us a part of your everyday routine. Yes, we are starting today's show with this news because we don't want to lose any of our listeners. We love hearing from you, We love all the emails and the engagement that we get, and we hope that you find us on our new feed. By the way, thanks again to everybody who was sending in all the vegan taco recipes. We kept reading them. We kept reading them. It inspired me to actually go out and do it. Um. I sent Jenny a few pictures throughout the week. Last week I was doing some some vegan tacos. So that that's just from my heart to your heart. Thank you guys for always being the best listeners on the planet. Well, we'll continue to be talking about tacos, about uniform colors, oracles, consensus, lots of things that we've been doing for a long time. We'll all continue on the new feed. So we're very excited about it. Yes, lots of fun news. So why don't we just dive right into week three, Connor, because this was an interesting one. I don't know about you. I did not do very well with my picks. I was feeling a little hockey after the first two weeks. I was doing pretty well picking most of the game's right. This was a rough go for a lot of people, I think. But why don't we start with the first news topic? What do you have? Connor? Alright, let's do this thing. Um. Amid the hype for a Russell Wilson m v PEA campaign, the only quarterback who seems to be operating in the same stratosphere is Aaron Rodgers, And is this wondering is this causation due to the pandemic and you know, his knowledge of the offense, his familiarity with the receivers, or was there just a little more tequila in the glass than previously believed. I have an alternate theory, Connor. I believe it's directly as a result of the Jordan Love Draft. Really, yes, because look back what happened when the Patriots drafted Jimmy Garoppolo. It launched Tom Brady into the second dynasty years the year they drafted Garoppolo, that was the beginning of the second Patriots dynasty eighteen. I don't know, it all seems to add up, So I think we're seeing a similar effect. At the very least, I think we underestimated what was unleashed that night in the spring, right, that this motivational furor that has enveloped Rogers. We underestimated that. Interesting. I was always like that was one of those things that when it happened, that was during the draft, That's what everybody talked about, right, It's like, Okay, this is is going to light a fire under Aaron Rodgers, and I remember sitting there thinking like, does the guy need a fire lit under him? Like he always seems pretty, you know, motivated. He's been one of the better quarterbacks in the league, but I don't know, maybe that's true. I mean, he's operating on a different plane than in years past. Um, if you go by ESPN is total QBR metric, which I do like because it takes into account opponent down in distance, situational football. He's actually playing better than Russell Wilson. He's got the highest total quarterback rating of any passer in the lead. So I don't know this is significant, and Green Bay seems to be rolling over people. But the one thing that I think deserves mentioning that is not getting a lot of mentioning is that Matt Lafleur now is sixteen and three, I believe in his first two years as a coach, which is better than Mike Holme Grants, better than Mike McCarthy. Um, I'm not sure if you took any of the I mean, definitely better than any of the other coaches that were hired in that twenty nineteen class. But I think he's done a good job to it. Not only navigating this but putting something together to make Rogers job a little easier, which I think he's doing. I think if you watch these games, it is a little bit less of a um, you know, a steeple chase for Rogers just to get one to one open wide receiver. Yeah. And I think what we're seeing is this progression of year one to year two and finally getting down exactly what needs to happen in this offense, getting over all those questions last summer about can you audible? Who has control all of the scrutiny over that. He's more comfortable and near too. Really, the system is coming alive as designed, but I still can't shake the motivational plight. Idea. Connor really came to this revelation on Sunday evening, and I found myself questioning everything. Did Bill Belichick draft Jimmy Garoppolo solely to light a fire under Tom Brady to incite these second dynasty years? Did the Packers do the same thing with Aaron Rodgers. Just a lot of questions really raised in my mind. Speaking of questions, after you mentioned your staff picks, I went over to Tally site, which is the website that we used to do our staff picks and they compile um all of our information in one kind of handy place. And it's interesting because tally site has this thing called the Sports i Q, and the sports i Q is a score out of a hundred that based on your previous I guess picking knowledge, they give you like a grade, uh that people can look at you and trust you or decide not to trust you. I went into last week with a sports ike you of like eighty four, which you know, was like a little bit better than my high school g p A. So I think that's good. Um, But now seventy five, the sports i Q is going down. And I looked at some of the picks that I made, and that makes a lot of sense. I had a rough week. I took Atlanta to New Orleans, took the Chargers, the Texans, the Eagles, the Rams, the Giants, the Cardinals. Man, this was the Vikings. This was a bad week for me. Jenny, Yeah, I also had a bad week. But I really can't believe you went down the sports like Q route, because, as we discussed last week, apparently my sports i Q was forty eight. So I'm really glad that you dredged that statistic con that was you know what, uh, I would say, not to pay it to obviously what I'm the point I'm trying to make sure is to not pay attention to the sports i Q. It's right now, We're good, We're we're we're good, We're better. I am joking. I am not defining myself worth on the sports i Q from a pickers site, and if I did, we would have a lot bigger problems. Let's go to number two, all right. The Atlanta Falcons by second double digit lead in three weeks, dropping to Owen three. As calls for dan Quinn's oyster grow. What seems like the ideal solution. Might Arthur Blank be looking at future Falcon coaches and assembling a pecking order. I'm so sorry that in the in the UH the notes when I wrote that topic for you, I guess the iPhone corrected auster to oyster. Oh. I was wondering. I wondered if this was some kind of um phrase that I didn't get, and I was like, maybe it's a thing someone's oyster. You're just trying to grab dan Quinn's oyster. I'm wondering about that. But listen, you're you're Your topics are often nonconformist, so I thought maybe this was some hip new phrase. Um, but we'll go with auster as calls for dan Quinn Allister grow what seems like the ideal solution and really, Connor, this is a difficult question, one that has plagued the Falcons every season really since the Super Bowl loss, and it, Yeah, it feels like they just can't shake this. Yeah, I think that if it's me, if I'm Arthur Blank, and I'm curious what you think about this. If you're going to get rid of a coach in the middle of the season, you do it because you think you have someone on staff who can galvanize the players and salvage what's left of the season. If I'm looking at it, I would say that the one person that you might want to get a look at is Raheem Morris, who has been mentioned in head coaching jobs. He did a good job that one good season when he replaced John Gruden in Tampa too not so good seasons, but um has risen through the ranks in Atlanta there and is obviously well liked. Do you want to see him or do you look at it like, we're already here, you know, we've we've already made it to this point. Dan Quinn has given us him good years. He has a winning record like Mike Smith did when he left Atlanta. Do you just give him the rest of the season. The players don't hate him, there's no mutiny on deck here. I think they played him into this season last year because they wanted him around. You know, I just think it's it's it doesn't make much sense to me to get rid of him unless you really want to to get a heart evaluation on Raheem Morris. Yeah, and you're right. Last year it was the players rallying behind him to essentially save his job. I mean, at the time, that was a really remarkable display from the players. I thought that there was no in fighting the locker room when things were going badly, that they wanted to fight for their coach. You don't always see that in the NFL, and that was clearly a big reason they kept him around. But this thing that they have that they can't shake is a really bad thing to not be able to shake um And it's really interesting kind of psychological question and for the game. I mean, we talk about this a lot when you have a devastating loss, how do teams recover from it? And it feels like in the Falcons case, it just has there's something that has stuck with them from that loss that whenever they get a big lead, maybe it creeps up and maybe the doubts kind of even subconsciously snowball. I mean, I don't know if that's the case, but it's hard to think that it doesn't play some kind of role. You wonder if you know it's one of those things where it's just an extreme case of something being extraordinarily unlucky. Like if you're Arthur Blank, can you put the Super Bowl in one bucket over here, and can you put this season in another bucket and say, Okay, we blue two leads to start the year. That's not good. Um is part of it, the defense's fault, which is what my head coaches expertise says, no doubt, absolutely as part of it. My franchise quarterback is not playing as well as he has in the past, absolutely, no doubt. And do you wonder if you get the backside of that, then maybe two of these next five games we win games that we're not supposed to. We come from behind and we win those games. I don't know. I mean, I think it's going to take a tremendous amount of patients, and it's hard. It's if you can imagine being in that seat hearing from the fans or the non existent fans, I guess in this case, I mean, it's hard to wonder what you might do because I could see Merritt on both sides, even though I think we both agree that dan Quinn is great for that locker room. If there is a coach that I've ever seen try as he as hard as he possibly could to shake this and and get the team away from what happened there, I think it was it was dan Quinn. I think that he really did do his best to try to move on from that Super Bowl, as difficult as it was. He really has and he's been intentional about that. That's what I think was so difficult, or has been so difficult hearing him explain on Sunday, I watched the video of a Zoom interview of how you try to evaluate where this is coming from and search for answers, and he was saying, all the things you know that you do, and they're constantly evaluating and constantly looking for reasons that things happen. You know that it's true, like he does all of those things. He's doing all of the right things. So it must be incredibly frustrating to have a problem that you can't crack. And for whatever it's worth, the reason that the players play hard for him is because he's like a really good person, Like he has a great energy about him. People like being around him. I mean this Offsteert last year, excuse me. In the postseason, you know, was reporting for the Super Bowl game story, and you report for both sides, so you have stuff for whichever team wins. So we were doing reporting on Kyle Shanahan and we were talking about the last time that they were in the Super Bowl, right when Kyle was the o C and the Super Bowl loss to the Page rates, and I wanted to talk to Dan about a bunch of things involving Kyle. But that was one of the questions. How he responded, What that moment was Like. Dan was on vacation in Hawaii and he called me to answer any question I needed. A lot was about Kyle and what he saw and as a coach. But then I asked the question about what happened at the end of that game, and he he said, hey, I knew this was coming, and he gave x Y and z answers. There aren't a lot of head coaches in the league that would make time in their vacation on why to answer difficult questions. Dan Quinn is one of those people. And so that's where I think it becomes a difficult decision to make because you know that he's a guy that people do rally behind, but the problem is the results have not been there recently. I think that um you know, we went to um Flowery Branch together on one of our training camp trips, and you know the way that there was the one year where he was explaining to teaching us the new tackling rule right, and you know how certain things were going, and to sit there, you know, he had brought in one of his pr people to tackle for us, which was very very cool of him. And just you get engaged, you get fired up, and you can tell that that's why the players like him so much. There's a there's a positive energy there, there's so much good there, and it's it's one of those things, it's like, that's why I don't understand what's happening. It's it's hard, um, you know, on the outside, it's it's very easy I think for people to make jokes to say, oh, twenty three blah blah blah, this is just who you are. But I don't think that's the case. I think it's just this weird psychological thing. And I don't know. If I'm Arthur Blank, I give him the season to figure it out. I think that you're not going to get a better option right now, like I don't think that there's another thing out there that is going to improve your chances at all. And I think he's done a lot for Atlanta too, so I think that he deserves that chance to to roll through the rest of the season. By the way, Connor, when you were apologizing for the right up of the topic, I thought you were going to apologize for the fact that you use pecking order and a bird topic. That was very intentional. Okay, yeah, I mean I enjoyed it. So I caught the little uh. I caught the nod to birds because that seems to be our thing, you know, reference, and it's sort of a miniature, far less funny version of um, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw a pop culture reference at you. So just I'm just just be where you watch Saturday Night Live at all? Ever at times? At times, have you ever seen Stephen the Bill Hayter character, who uh he does? He comes on Weekend Update and he talks about all the crazy nightlife places that he's gone to. I have not probably embarrassing. No, no, that's totally fine, but I think you would like it. It's very like New York City focused and and everything like that. But um, the whole deal is one of the writers who's a comedian, John Mulaney, he tries to he wouldn't show him the que cards before he went out to read all the jokes, and his goal was to make him laugh on the air to the point where he couldn't continue. And so I like to kind of sneak in little things in the topics just to see if I can get you to even like, you know, just stumble over it and be like, oh my goodness, that's not funny, because I'm not going to give myself that much credit, but weird enough to to give it a second look. Sometimes. Well, that is the joy of the topics. Everyone, Connor, you have achieved that. There you go. Um okay, uh topic number three like a microwave burrito after a long night of drinking. Josh Allen was both wonderful and beautifully destructive. And Sunday's wild win over the Rams that's uh. He's second in the league in touchdown passes and is clearly developed as a deep ball quarterback. And what is becoming a weekly theme, Jenny, I'm asking you, are the Bills and Josh Allen? For real? I think this time my answer probably adjust slightly from the last time that we talked about this. Yeah, I mean I was really off on this one. I underestimated his ability to take a jump in year three. I do think gear three is a difficult one to project for quarterbacks. Sometimes they're able to make that leap and sometimes they're not able to make that. But he's thrown for over three hundred yards in every game. He has ten touchdowns with only one interception. Um. There are definitely some of those moments you mentioned, those head scratching type moments. The bad face mask penalty was one of them, and the game came down to a questionable, to say the least dp I call. But overall, Alan has been fantastic. And while I think we were both a little skeptical of the Stefon Diggs trade just because bringing in a top receiver doesn't always have the immediate impact that you think it will, but in this case, it really has had that impact. It's been a factor in Alan's ability to take a jump forward. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm amazed. And I would say that if you asked me to put a percentage basis on it coming into even this week, I would have said it was scheme and you know eight scheme twenty development. I would say it's probably closer to six's scheme forty development. Now for me, I mean, he's just making these throws that are pretty incredible. I mean, he's We always knew that he had come into the league with that kind of cannon arm and had that big arm talent um, but I I just it was never functionally used as well as it was and now we're seeing that happen again. Are some of these fifty fifty balls that aren't going to be completed in other games? Absolutely, our team is going to figure out a way to defend Allen. Yes, I think that, Um, there's no doubt that he's going to face um harder challenges as they go on, but it just incredible. They blew three lead and then came back, drove down and won the game. And you know, bad calls are you know, yes or no, it's it's just one of those things that, uh, shows a lot of maturity in a quarterback that I didn't think really had exhibited a lot of that on field maturity in the past. Yeah. I think that's really well said. I still remember at the Combine when he did his quarterback workout and he threw a deep pass maybe six cyards or something. Was just really one of those where he really launched it and there was like an audible gasp in the dome, which is usually pretty quiet, right, it's like a library like atmosphere during these Combine workouts, UM, or at least it well, I mean, I think there's fans in there now, but this was a few years ago obviously, UM, But yeah, I remember there was like an audible gasp at this remarkable arm talent. But making that arm talent functional, as you said, has really been the difference this year definitely. UM. Speaking of which, I think this transition is nicely from a quarterback on the rise to a quarterback that is not on the rise on the brink. Yes, yes, Topic four. The Eagles are now zero two and one after slumping to a tie against the previously winless Cincinnati Bengals. Carson Wentz is struggling unlike anything we've seen in his career, to the point where Doug Peters and his fielded questions about second round pick Jalen Hurts. Are these just unexpected growing pains or is something broken in Philly the This is a weird situation, right, I think that Carson Wentz is I think I looked this up for UM for this morning. I think he's under pressure less than ever before in his career through three games. Uh So, his three game average is lower than any of the season averages in terms of the amount of frequency of pressure UM ESPN does pass blocking win rates, run blocking win rates. The entire Eagles offensive line, in one way or another are in the top ten in all of these metrics. They're winning at the line of scrimmage. They're keeping guys out of his face. The one differences. I think that his on target passing, which is a Pro Football Reference has a great metric. There is about half of what it's been in the past, which if I'm Doug Peterson, that's scary, right, give me pressure, Like if if the quarterback is not functioning well under pressure, that's fine. You know we can fix that. Um, you know, I can tool something up. I can get guys in the right place. If he's missing people. And again there's a lot of injuries, sure, but that that would be scary to me if I'm a head coach and I think they're in that position where it's like, Okay, I don't know exactly what to do here. Yeah, there's clearly a lack of confidence and Once for Peterson to make the decision that he made at the end of the game. So where do they go from here? I don't know that I saw this coming. I thought Once was going to have a good year. But maybe we should have paid more attention to the whispers that have been coming out of the Eagles locker rooms, some of the reports about teammates questioning Once his ability and his leadership and being put under the microscope. I mean, I think we thought a lot of that was kind of okay. Well, Fulls leads a team the Super Bowl and Once sort of needs to re establish himself after his injuries. UM, but we're long past that now. And uh, it just we haven't seen that same once we saw before that afternoon in Los Angeles, UM, during the Super Bowl season when he was on track to be the m v P. And uh, we haven't seen him since. I had a theory that UM the Eagles during his best of times, like the Eagles were borrowing heavily from that North Dakota State offense. UM. A lot of what they were doing was very inspired by what Carson did in college, which was not something that NFL teams were prepared to do. UM. If you look at their the number of times they've run RPOs, which I know drives Doug Peterson crazy that his offense was characterized that way during the Super Bowl season, But they have gone down significantly, Like it's not quite the offense that he's used to now. This is a little bit more pro style. This they're asking him to do more, and I'm wondering if that has something to do with it or is just the injuries. I mean, you know, on the flip side, the drop rate has never been higher. Right, Receivers are dropping about six percent, so one in every twenty passes that he's throwing that doesn't feel like a lot to me. That feels pretty standard for the NFL, but it is higher than when he's used to So I don't know, It's like it's one of these weird things where you wonder when he gets this full complement of receivers back, if everything goes back to normal, or if we are going to end up seeing, you know, something strange this year and I don't know, you know, the Eagles end up bottoming out. Who knows what's going to happen? Yeah, is it a lack of confidence. There's just so many factors. It's really difficult to pin down. And yet that division is such a mess that good, as we always say every year, you could make it to the playoffs potentially with nine and seven record. I mean, there's a lot of possibilities here. But if if I'm bella chicken enough and I believe in my roster, I just start the year like oh and four and then just unveil a new offense a week five, you know, so teams have four more like a month less to prepare for what I'm inevitably doing, because you know that you can come back and win the division, like, it's so bad. It's bad every year. I don't know why. It's crazy. It's really this year though might be the worst, but it's really this perennial bother something. Right, There's so many good divisions, and the NFC East is always like this. It reminds me of in school, one of my best friends, also named Connor Um. The teacher did a chart where Um she looked at the grades of the kids that were sitting behind and aside him during class, and it was like an echo of d's and f's that went all the way out to the back of the classroom, and kids started getting a's and b's. And she said, literally like you're making people dumber around you. And I'm wondering if that was a you know, if that was one of these things that maybe the NFC East they're just they see everybody else and they say, okay, we can we can suck too. I like that analogy, Connor, That's a good one, all right. What do we got for number five? Fear Russell Wilson now is fourteen touchdown passes in three games, which is the highest number in NFL history. Can this towards stretch He's on be sustained. And I think, more importantly, do you think Seattle's defense will prove to be an achilles heel as we move on? I mean, I think part of the reason that Russell Wilson has been so good, right is because he's had to be so good because they've been pushed a little bit defensively. Yeah, that's an important part of the dialogue here, and that's why I think he is the leading MVP candidate. Yes, he's been playing that well, but Rogers, as you mentioned, is also playing well. But Wilson is win winning in spite of the defense. Wilson is essentially single handedly willing his team to win every week. Uh, but the defense is giving up about five dred yards per game UM and now Jamal Adams has a groin injury, so it's hard to exactly know. I mean, yes, at this point, what Wilson is doing does look sustainable, like no one looks like they can stop it. But that's also a giant burden to have to put up that many points every week because your defense isn't slowing anyone down. Yeah, I think that his play itself is sustainable, but probably the idea that they can outscore people like this. Um is not. And it comes with an interesting nugget that I heard this morning, Jenny, and that is that too, two teams are averaging over thirty five points a game, uh this season, the Packers and the Seahawks. That's the first time that that's happened since like the nineteen forties. Through three weeks that two teams are averaging more than thirty five points a game. It's pretty incredible. Wow, since the nineteen forties. Who are the teams then? I don't know. It's probably like the you know, the Dayton Gentleman or something like that, like one of those snappy, you know, made up things. That's the crazy that. Yeah, that's a good one. I don't know. I think that you and I are both This is a pro Seahawks, pod, pro Dimes, pro Chargers, you guys know, the drill. But UM and you and I both picked them to go quite far. But I did not expect the defense to underperform as much as they did, which is um, you know, has been a little bit alarming to me. I will say, when you'd rather have the defense be underperforming than the offense, frustrating Lee not using Wilson the right way right, because you have confidence that Pete Carroll will figure something out and can try to get the defense working better. Um. And the missing element perhaps has been this willingness to let Russ cook as much as I hate to use whatever hashtag that is UM, so they have that and so you just have to say, Okay, well, Pete will fix the defense. Do you think as a coach is probably immensely frustrating that the thing that fans have been asking you to do is the thing that unlocks the key to your success. Like I remember when we would we were covering the Giants. I don't know if this was a big topic when when you were on the beat, but the Giants. Uh. It was like right around the time that Chip Kelly was coming into the NFL and everyone said to Kevin Gilbride, why aren't you guys running no huddle? You know, why aren't you guys running no huddle? And um, and then they did it and it was horrible, and I think personally he probably felt a little bit better about it, like, Okay, see we tried it and it doesn't work, and you guys are all idiots. But this is the complete opposite of that, where the fans have been asking you to do this for years and you've been ignoring them, and now you have and it's phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like the go to the no huddle. Why don't you use the no huddle more often? Is a common question to be asked on beats. I remember this when we covered the Jets and Brian Schottenheimer was there, and he always said the same thing, Connor. I don't know if you remember. He'd always be like, we like to keep that in our hip pocket for when you really need it's it's not something you want to use all the time, and you want to have it there for when you need to, you know, go into turbo. Know what he said was, we like to keep that in our hip pocket, Jenny. Because Brian was fantastic at remembering people's first names, I always thought that that was like a good thing. And now he's in Seattle and he's and he's listening to the fans. He took it out of his hip pocket. He had kept it in there for a few years, and now it is out into the open from the hip pocket. Good for him. Yeah, I mean, it's it's fun to watch, but those games are also stressful if you have any kind of rooting interest in Nasty Hawks. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. All right, Connor, why don't we head over to our favorite part of the show, What do you have for the Oracle? This week? So? Uh, we made it through a um an entire episode without really well we talked about the Jets a little bit, but without referencing the current fall of discontent in New York, and so I think it's only right to bring up the fact that, yes, the Giants are owned three and they got clubbed by the forty niners as our end, and former colleagues Steve Polity put at their junior varsity team came into MetLife Stadium and beat the Giants this weekend. But I think I know what is going to happen at the end of this season, So I'm going to predict what is going to happen right now. Is a real oracle? Yeah, so this is a long play, but if I'm betting on something, I think this feels right, and I bet that you'll agree with me. At the end of the season. I think that Dave Gettleman will retire or be made a consultant for the organization and the Giants will either it will probably promote um one of their long time assistants like Kevin Abrams to the top role there and kind of allow them to move in a different direction. I don't it's ridiculous because when you're in New York, part of the deal is you're writing about the firing and hiring of people, and especially if teams are owing three like the Jets are right, fire the head coach, fire the head coach, fire the head coach. You're not going to do that with Joe Judge. And so what is what are you doing right now? You're writing about fire the GM, fire the GM, fire the GM. It makes zero sense to do that now unless you know college football has already started, so the scouts are already on the road. You're already doing a lot of that stuff anyway, you know. And so I think it makes perfect sense to be grooming a replacement while asking the other person to be to kind of gently take a soft retirement. And I think that that's probably what's going to happen in East Rutherford. So Giants fans of whom I've heard from, and I get it. It's frustrating, but this is probably what's going to happen. That makes sense, Connor, and then Joe Judge can have a hand in shaping the team a little bit more in his image as we discussed last week, or whatever. His idea would be to shape the team rather than trying to work together with a GM that predated him. Yeah, I don't know what do you make about all this? Like I do think it's a spicy time to listen to talk radio. If you're in the car, I would say, there's a lot going on. But what do you think? I think it's the rich Samini, another great former co worker, had a well colleague, I guess I had a great stat about I think this is the third time since that both the Jets and the Giants started seasons oh and three. So it's a um hasn't been the best of thirty years or so. Yeah, it's a tumultuous time in New York. The forty Niners got a little bit lucky to get those teams on back to back while they're having the injury issues. Of course, a lot of injuries happened in the Jets game. But the point be they have Jets, Giants, now Eagles next week. Oh my gosh, about that, yeah, right, in a time when they're you know, looking to recover. It's a little bit of a soft part of the schedule that can help them as they try to get some of the guys that are able to return this season back. But um, yeah, New York football has been depressing for a while. It's been a difficult time to be uh NFL writer if you live in the New York area because a lot of the games that you go to are not meaningful. The seasons are over, generally by for the fifth week. I have gone to way more games in New England than I have I've met Life Stadium over the last couple of years, and I will make a point that I remember covering a Giant team that was owing six and Rashad Jennings in the locker room saying to us, Uh, this is exactly what you guys hoped for, Like you guys love negativity and you thrive on negativity. And I said, actually, Rashad, that's not true. Our numbers are so much better when the team is winning. Uh, that we would love it if you guys were good, because uh, you know, some of us get judged on you know at the time, you know how many people actually look at this stuff and it's better when the team is, you know, doing well. So New York writers are not inherently negative people. I think that we uh, you know, but we get that, we get that. I don't know, what do you want to call it? That bias? Sometimes I guess, yeah, it's been a while since there was that buzz, and when there is that buzz, it's a lot of fun. We remember the years when the Giants, you know, they won Super Bowls in twenty two, thousand seven, and eleven, and then the Jets went to a f C title games in between, and there was just like this fun energy which she was going to be better. We all remember the Snoopy Bowl between the Giants and the Jets, the year the Giants ended up going to win the Super Bowl, and you just really miss that energy and that engagement. Just feels like it's been a sad stretch for the New York teams. If I had asked you in the locker room when we were both just hanging out, wide eyed twenty year olds um just milling about in do you think that Rex Ryan and Tom Coughlin are still going to be ruling this ruling New York, which you have maybe not Tom Cough but uh, definitely at least Rex Ryan. What would you have said. I would have said no on both, Yeah, just because it's so unlikely for a coach to last that long. And you always had the sense that Rex's star was going to burn bright and then maybe die out quickly. Right, certainly not the trajectory that it's taken. I would have expected he would have still been in football. It's a surprise to me that he is not in football in any capacity. Um. But obviously that you know, he went to the Buffalo job right afterwards, and we all know how things went from there. But I don't think I would have expected he would have still been in New York. I don't know. O'Connor. Citricity fun to think about and will be interesting to see what the Jets go moving for it. But all right, what is our French consensus for today? Well you may have heard a little bit about this on Sunday. There was a decent amount of coverage, which was cool to see. Um. I just wanted to say that this is really testament to the work of Sam Rappaport in the NFL League office. Sam's a retired Canadian Women's League quarterback. She had started girls flag and women's tackle programs in the US, and when she joined the league office UH several years ago, she made a commitment to connect women who had experience playing the game deep knowledge of the game with NFL decision makers, essentially creating networking channels that didn't exist, UH, kind of forcing teams to expand their networks to consider other qualified candidates that they might not have been considering. And so she started a women's career in Football forum. UH. It first had coincided with the Women's World Football Games, which had you know, some two D fifty female tackle players from around the world. UM, and then it's grown from there every year at the Combine the last few years, I've attended some of the sessions and they have panel discussions, but more important of these breakout rooms where head coaches, general managers, team presidents connect with qualified candidates, many of them at the college level who are working their way up through coaching and just don't have the inherent networks because they played the women's game and not the men's game. UM. So essentially just creating that network and the result of that was what we saw on Sunday, which was UH. There was a female coach on both sidelines for Washington and Cleveland, Calli Brownson, who is the chief of staff for Kevin Stefanski Jennifer King. She is a full time assistant coach season long, full time position for the Washington team under Ron rivera UM and then in addition Sarah Thomas, who was the first full time female referee in the league. UM. They were all working the game, and Laura Oakman of Fox Sports did a nice job of telling that story during the broadcast. UM. But I just think a lot of times we talked about how do we open pipelines, and the reality is it's a slow process. It is the liberate process. You have to be intentional about it. I am sure. When Sam started, I mean I've talked to her about this, it was small and people didn't know what would come of it, and there were maybe only a handful of teams that sent representatives that are interested. And now it's almost every team, UM, and almost every team has participated in this program, and I think it's a pretty organic way to bring in qualified candidates. You know, there's essentially it's like a networking event. You meet, you can. Uh, there's programs to bring in coaching interns for the summer or for a season, um and progress from there. Um. And all it's doing is ensuring that people who have the skills but just don't have the connections to earn a job in the NFL, UM can earn it through this other way of connecting with decision makers. UM. So I just think it was a real representation of how you intentionally work on diversity and inclusion. You make an effort to make us sports not look homogeneous and to be inclusive of gender and race and sexual orientation and so many different categories. And so that was a really awesome representation of it on Sunday. And I think it was cool, you know, for me to to reflect a little bit. Um. I remember I was at NFL dot com at that point, and I think I wrote the news story when Sarah Thomas became, you know, the first female official in the NFL. And at the time, the feedback was so ridiculous and and so dumb, you know, um, and and so expected obviously, but this is a good time to look back and reflect. Now she's been in the league for five years, um, and look at how many officials that we've openly complained about that are maybe not doing their jobs right. And here's Sarah Thomas who has never been part of that conversation. She's always been um one of the top officials in her group. There's never been this game that's hinged on a call that she's made. She's always been, you know, smart and fair and you know, one of the best officials in the league. And I think it's one of those great examples of like, you know, yeah, you know, we can complain about it and people can just holler about it when it happens, but of course when it goes well for five years, that nobody's either to say anything or even acknowledge how well it's going. And I think that that's one of those things that's so important. It's like, you know, hey, this is working. They belong here, they're doing things that are making the team better. And whether that was the forty Niners or Washington or you know, any of these teams that have hired female coaches, you know, or female executives, or know, anybody at any tier of the organization, it's all been good. It's all been positive. And I think that this was a good time to take a step back and acknowledge that, Yeah, and it was just a pretty normal thing, right. This is a Week three game between Washington and Cleveland, just the normal part of an NFL calendar. Um so I think that was a pretty neat aspect as well. So definitely alright, Connor Well ought to discuss a lot to discuss next week. We look forward to being back and yes, make sure everybody could find us on our new feed, just search week Side Podcasts wherever you get your podcasts, and we look forward to joining you again soon. The MMQB week Side Podcast is Me, Jenny Rentis and Connor Or. We are produced by Shelby Royson Sis. Executive producer of podcasts is Scott Brody. Ben Eagle is Director of Editorial Projects and Products, and Mark Mravik is Emeritus Executive Director of the mm QB