Will Brinson usually joins Adam on Mondays, but since both were busy yesterday, he's stopping by today to talk about the Carolina Panthers.

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Visit us at capitalfinancialusa.com. This is the Adam Gold Show. Let's find out if Will Brinson, senior NFL writer, CBSSports.com, pick six podcast moderator and a fantastic partner in immediate day golf outing, which we ended up finishing second. We ended up finishing second in, which is a loss. First losers, that's what we are, Will Brinson.

How are you, my friend? I think he's grabbing water. Uh-oh, Will's getting water. Yep. Well, that's...

I see his background, but... You see the background? He's MIA right now. Oh my gosh, Will, get back here. I can't do that open again.

I can't do that intro again. What a train wreck of a program this was today. This has been today. Well, you weren't here for Monday, so we had to redo Monday for you. I wasn't here. I wasn't here yesterday. No, that's you. That's me.

That's you. I wasn't here yesterday. And then, and today there's too many things going on at the same time.

And again, men can't multitask. We have to simply accept that. So we'll talk about the Panthers offense and everything else going, that isn't going on with the Panthers. All right, Will, are you there? There he is. Oh, I'm here.

So, all right. The Panthers are averaging 16 points a game on offense. So you have been watching the National Football League for a long time. I can't recall an offense that looked this inept.

Am I wrong? Or, I mean, it's certainly got to be one of the top worst offenses in the last 20 years. Probably not even, probably not even as bad as the Panthers 2011 offense with Jimmy Clawson, but it's definitely very bad. I have to go look at that now. I mean, I think, you know, you and I talked about this yesterday in our pre-production meeting. It was a late team pre-production. It was five hours. Yeah, five and a half. Closer to six is right. I think that you said it, the Panthers are the most unwatchable team in the NFL right now. Yeah. That's not like, that's a really, like the Lions are one in three and they don't look like a team that's going to win, you know, 10 games, but they're watchable as hell.

You know why? Because they have one of the best offenses in the game. They're putting up over 400 yards a game. I'd be okay being 0-4 if the Panthers could make you go, hey, that was fun on offense, but they can't. Absolutely.

And in fact, I think you could make the argument that David Tepper might be fine with it too. If you, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're scoring points and you're staying close, you're keeping games close and the team is enjoyable and you've got clear stars that are developing at, at the wide receiver and running back positions. And, you know, Detroit has a great offensive line, by the way.

They built that thing through the first round. Carolina does not have a great offensive line, but there's just nothing enjoyable about watching Carolina play. Baker Mayfield, did you, have you, have you talked about Stephen, Stephen A. Smith's rant yet? Have you seen that? I have not seen the rant about, oh no, I, I've seen where he shouts out North Carolina cities. I love that.

That was great. He's like, he's like, trust me, I know North Carolina. I mean, anybody can, he's, he's got a, what was the, uh, the presidential candidate?

Who's like, we're going to Cleveland. We're going with whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. No, no, but Stephen A. worked in Asheboro back in the day.

Yeah, as a Winston-Salem State grad. So he's, he, he's familiar with, yeah, he's familiar with, but the point being is that, um, like he, he was telling Baker Mayfield, like your career is in jeopardy and I don't think he's wrong. I don't know that it's entirely Baker's fault. I think it's a, it's a fault of like, you know, I just think it's, it's a, it's, it's not, there's only one way that, that ownership, I mean, look, the problem probably starts higher than the guy who's in charge thinks it does.

And that's a, that's a, why don't you need to grab a mirror and take a nice hard look situation. Um, but Matt rules, not good at this, right? We can, we can understand that Matt rules, not good at this. I'm not slamming Ben McAdoo. Uh, they don't have great personnel. The offensive line hasn't worked out.

No, no, no, no. It is a David Tepper problem. I don't think David Tepper is going to fire Matt rule next week or the week after or the weekend. I really don't. Um, I don't see what is, unless you have a coach on staff that you think could be your next head coach.

And I'm pretty sure that they don't. So I wouldn't, I can't see why you would do that. How would it make it better?

How would it free these guys up? May I guess you can name Ben McAdoo, the interim head coach, but all you'd be doing is satisfying your fans. We said like a Wisconsin, Jim Leonard thing where you're trying to.

Right. You're trying to fire Paul Chris to get ahead of the curve and grab Jim Leonard and give him an audition. Like you're not thinking we fired Matt rules so I can pay him for the next three years while Ben McAdoo gets a, you have 12 games, 14, 13 game audition. And when we, and Ben McAdoo was the head coach for the giants with a better team, right? Didn't, wasn't he the coach after Tom Coughlin left, right? He was the guy who went to the, um, they had the, they went to the playoffs and they had the boat situation with Odell and all the receivers in the boat and then they got blown out by Green Bay and then they never, they, they never recovered and then he got fired. So like, and Eli Manning, he broke up Eli Manning's, uh, consecutive start streak for Gina Smith, which in hindsight, he wasn't wrong about Gina.

I got beat by Geno Smith in fantasy football the other day, which is fine because my team's terrible. Um, the Adam Golden studio with my friend coach Pete DeRuda with the Capitol financial advisory group. We are talking retirement coach. How does longevity risk figure into our retirement and income plan? This is the best of times and the worst of times, Adam longevity risk means we're going to live too long. But to me, every day I live is not too long. Right?

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I'd rather fire. Well, maybe I see the fans firing David Tepper. I don't see Tepper firing Matt rule until we get well into the season.

And I mean, unless they're one and 11, well, that's well into the season. I think. I think, I mean, I think one might get it done. Yeah. But again, again, I just don't see what the, what the point is at that point is just David Tepper likes to fire people.

Well, I don't disagree with that. He's not, he's not fired us yet. I say yet. Can you fire us? Uh, no, but I did hear if he could fire us and I'm in trouble. I did hear that Matt rule said when they, he was asked to be thought about making a quarterback change and it basically said comma today. So it was after the game.

So part of me, my, my bells and whistles go off like, wait, Matt might be thinking about making a quarterback change. And he was asking about, he said, uh, um, um, obviously not, um, uh, available. It's like, okay. I went, well, well, Sam is not available yet. I guess. Right.

Um, I don't even remember. It's been so long since I've seen Sam Darnold. He's hurt.

Uh, I was talking about it as though he was an option the other day. It's PJ Walker is your option at quarterback. So they're definitely not making a change at quarterback is the, I mean, Baker's a problem only that he's not as good as we all want him to be. But Baker's not the problem. The problem is everything else. The problem is that they don't have a good enough offensive line and it's just not there yet. I don't know.

Carson, Winston, Matthew Stafford would not be having great seasons with this painters team. No. Well, I mean, when's I guess when to be a slight upgrade of a Baker, maybe it would be a bigger upgrade. He would simply be physically bigger.

Yes. Physically. He would not throw as many passes about it down. Stafford would be an obvious upgrade, but, um, he didn't want to play here. And there's probably part of the reason is why, like, look at, look at, look at, look at who they got at quarterback in these trades. Sam Darnold was literally the last musical chair in the quarterback that year. Baker Mayfield got traded like two weeks before the season, because he was the last musical chair this past year. They have been the losers. They are the, they're the last landing spot for quarterbacks in trades that no one else wants because they know what's going to happen.

That's the Panthers. Will Brinson is joining us here, uh, on the Adam Gold show, senior NFL writer, cbssports.com moderator picks six podcasts, the only or the best, maybe that's the case in both, uh, the best daily NFL podcast, nearly award-winning NFL podcasts. I think we finished in second place in the people's choice podcast awards, which while disappointing, uh, spared me a tattoo. So I'll take it. Well, that's good. Do who'd you lose to, uh, another CBS podcast, morning combat podcast.

My gosh. All right. Well, um, you, then you're still, you still won. Yeah. You're, you're still, you're still in first place in my book, no tattoo is a win. I'll tell you that.

All right. Well, are the bills still the best team in the league? I mean, I could make, you can make the argument for it. I think I would probably take the chiefs right now, but it's probably a one a one, one B situation. I just think, uh, Kansas state looks a little more consistent on offense. Um, certainly the bills have, you know, maybe a little more explosion that obviously blind for Casey looks like it could be really, really dominant, uh, the bills defense better. So, I mean, yeah, I think, I think when you look at the NFL right now, it's one a one B with Kansas city and Buffalo, it's just really how you pick, how you want to rank them. Um, but I have no problem with Buffalo being called the best team in the league.

Yeah. I've seen the chiefs. I love the chiefs. I think the bills have a better defense than the chiefs, although I'm not knocking the chiefs at all, by the way, they got hosed in that with the Chris Jones, roughing the passer call, uh, that aided the loss to the cults, that was just a horrendous call. The bills and the bills got the reverse, right? They got, they got, they benefited from a roughing the passer call where, um, you know, John, they got 15 free yards in that final drive where they took the lead over the Ravens.

Oh, that, that is a, that is also true, but I, I, I felt like they would have gotten there anyway. Well, what is, what is it about the Ravens and leads that are toxic? Well, uh, so the Ravens were 103 in games where they had a seven point, 17 point lead coming into the season and the history of their franchise dating back to 1996, uh, they are O and two in games this season where they had 17 point leads, um, which is, it's really hard to do. I mean, you know, to blow a 17 point lead like that when you're in a league team with an elite offense and it really boils down to their secondary, you know, they just don't have the, they don't have all the players they need on the back end right now. And they don't have the pass rush to help. So like we see, you see it all the time where good, you know, a good secondary can make up for a questionable pass rush or a questionable pass, I mean, uh, excuse me, a questionable, a good pass rush can make up for a questionable secondary, right? You know, you can, um, you look at the, I think it's the 07, maybe the 11 giants, we both qualify, but you know, they had such good pass rushes that it made the, it made the secondary look good.

I think the Panthers probably qualified for that in 2015 too, uh, but the Ravens have neither. You know, you have neither a pass rush nor a, you know, a strong secondary. They got, they got Marla Humphrey, Marcus Peters to play back there, but it's just, they're just, they can't stop anybody on defense. And so they sort of need to adjust how they play on offense. And I don't think they figured that out yet where they need to realize that they have to be foot on the gas 24 seven credit to John Harbaugh, you know, I, I probably kick and take the field goal, but I think he understood, Hey, you know, we're probably not winning this game with field goals when he went for it down there on fourth or two, you can't throw the interception and give them 18 for yards. But generally speaking, I think you're going to see the Ravens be really aggressive on offense when it comes to try to continue to score points, knowing that right now the defense just isn't going to help them out.

I a hundred percent agree with you. I thought it was the right decision to go for the touchdown there. Um, I also think that I'm not sure that the Ravens are, have much other than Lamar and Rashad Bateman and Devin DuVernay have looked really good. The receivers are fine in terms of the run game, but it was considered like JK Dobbs looked really good. I thought it gets Buffalo to, um, the, the receivers remember we considered like the, like, Oh, they have no receivers. And now they might have Mark Andrews at tight ending could be the best in football.

He's one of the two best or three best at least. And then if you have Bateman turning into a one and DuVernay turning into a two, all of a sudden, this is just a team with a loaded offense. But the problem is on the other side of the football.

Yes. Oh, there's, there's no question. The problem is on the other side of the football. I just, I just, I don't see the Ravens being able to grind games out because you don't want Lamar running between the tackles. Uh, like they got down to the, you know, the red zone and the running game really just couldn't really do it for him because the running game is, is so predicated on Lamar. Yeah.

That whoever the guy is they're missing. It just doesn't seem like they could get those like the elite run, you know, run, run, like run blocking left, left tackles. And so I think like if he gets back and he gets up, he almost came back this past week. So he should be back this week or at least week six of the latest. I think you could see that running game maybe take off a little bit, but yeah, you're right. I mean like it, it, they, they are explosive, but maybe not efficient down in the red zone right now. And that's, that's going to be a problem moving forward for sure.

All right. So senior NFL writer, cbssports.com pick six podcast moderator, a couple of things before we let you go. Uh, the first, I know Jerry Jones said today or yesterday that Dax coming back, I could see him playing this week, but he's still having a problem gripping the football. Can I just remind Jara that they haven't lost with Cooper rush at quarterback. So I know, I don't know, maybe let Cooper rush play until Dax a hundred percent healthy and then go back to deck.

Is that crazy? No, I've been saying that for two weeks and it's like, do you not remember what happened with Russell Wilson last year? He came to, he rushed back from like a similar injury with his throwing hand and he came back, it was like a, you know, like a bone or a ligament and he, and he came back and he couldn't grip and they scored zero points against the Packers. It was a game where like Gina Smith probably wasn't going to win, but you know, give him a chance and, um, and you know, rushed over the rest of the year and they didn't look good offensively.

So I think it's, if you, you can play Cooper rush and tool, I don't, you don't see playing until you lose a game, but keep playing him until like, if he, if he goes two and one, the next three weeks, just let deck Hill, let deck get healthy, let deck get re like rested, like get his hand, right. Because, you know, Brady Quinn always says this on the pixels podcast, YouTube daily podcasts, but he, you know, he always points out, it's like, I mean, it, it, it, it, it is true. Like I put it out too. It's like, if you have an injury like that, you're going to, if you're not healthy and you're not recovered fully, you're going to overcompensate with other stuff. And that's how, like, maybe you don't feel like you can use your hands to spin the ball correctly. So, you know, you're forcing it. I mean, like that's how you tear a shoulder or like, you know, you're, you're, you're holding the ball longer in the, in the pocket because you're, you're worried you won't be able to like get the ball out as quickly as you need. And so you take a huge hit to the side or something, you know, there's just all different ways that these things cascade and so it's so stupid to try to rush him back, especially when you're winning games.

Yeah. And it, to me, it would be an ego that would put Dak Prescott back on the field before he is fully ready, whether it's his ego or Jerry Jones, just like let Cooper rush go. But I know, I do know that Dallas has tried to stay near Philly and Philly is right now for now. I think they're the only undefeated team in the league and Dallas is playing at the Rams. So it just leads me to this.

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Download today from the app store or on Google play. Be safe out there. Yeah. I mean, yes, if they, I mean, now it's, it's week four or it was a week five, I guess now. Um, and, and so you don't want to like, you don't want to bury a team that's two and two and tied for first in his division, but yeah, they've, they've looked bad against elite defenses who can generate pressure. That offensive line is a major problem. And Sean McVay is going to have to get into the lab and figure out what he wants to do with this offensive line and how he wants to use it to, you know, whatever he needs to do in order to mitigate the pressure that Matthew Stafford's getting, because he leads the NFL in, in, in interceptions. There's a, I mean, that's sort of part of his game. He led the NFL in interceptions last year. He's an aggressive thrower. He's not afraid to throw in a tight window. Sometimes he makes bad, makes a bad play like last night with a big six, but more importantly for me, he's tied for second in terms of sacks taken.

And so like, that's the, that's the word for me is if he's getting pressured, those turnovers are going to get cranked up. And the other thing is Alan Robinson, you know, we saw it in the Superbowl when Odell Beckham went down, they didn't have a secondary weapon next to Cooper cup, but they really struggled offensively. And now Alan Robinson can't get going and all they have is Cooper cup and Tyler Higby. And it just, it's, it's, there's, something's missing from that offense. So they need to figure out how to implement Alan Robinson and get him on the same page as McVeigh and, and, and, and Matthew Stafford, obviously.

And then also, you know, what are you going to do with the offensive line? The team is not, they're, they're in trouble, but they're not, not writing them off or anything like that just because that NFC West division looks like it could be, I mean, anybody's game at this point, to be perfectly honest, no, no question. I think the best team live to win that division, by the way, Seattle's not good. Dude, the 49ers have Jimmy G and Kyle loves to kick shit. I mean, the 49ers are not like, they look great on Monday night, but they're not that dominant. The Rams clearly have issues. And if you, if you want to back the Cardinals, be my guest, you know, Smith is the first quarterback is he has the highest completion percentage for a quarterback in his first four games of the season in NFL history. Like the Seahawks are live, man.

Okay. Uh, I think the, I think the 49ers is still the best team in that division, even though I think they're three quarters of a football team, I think their defense is great. I think the 49ers occasionally are good offensively and occasionally are trash offensively. They happen to lose a game 11 to 10 because Jimmy G dropped back out of the end zone into a safety. I think Jimmy will be okay. I think we'll see the same version of Jimmy we have seen over the last three years. If he can stay healthy, which is the real big, if, uh, then I think the 49ers will win that division because I think the rest of that team and the coaching is good enough to make up for it. I don't think they'll have much of a problem this week.

I, I know I have, when I was with the division before the season and look, I mean, part of it was, Hey, maybe the train lanes, like I think tree Lansing would be awesome, but if it doesn't work, I still got Jimmy G and that's a pretty good fallback to have. Like they would be in real trouble if they didn't have Jimmy Garoppolo in there. And yeah, he looked like crap two weeks ago. Um, he's going to have up and down games like all quarterbacks do Jimmy Garoppolo is just like a lightning rod for him for some reason.

Like when he has a bad game, it's like freak out city. Uh, you know, I do think that one of the things we saw on Monday night was Kyle's training and just making life easier for Jimmy G, you know, you know, get the ear. Granted the touchdown pass, the deepest game of the through high, you know, did he mean to throw that high?

It's like, probably not. Probably did not mean to sail that high out of the way of the defender, but he did kudos to him. Um, and then he had the little one yard screen pass the Deebo.

Um, you know, just all kinds of things that you can do. Like that office makes life easy for quarterbacks. And so Jimmy G knows where to go with the ball. He's going to be able to distribute there to win their fair share games. I would bet them to win the division right now, if I were, if I were betting anything on that. I think I picked him to win the division before the season, like I said, and I think they are the best team, but I do think Seattle is live. I think all four of those teams are live in that division. Well, I mean, if the division's going to be one at nine and eight, then yes, anybody can win it except Arizona. Cause we know they're not going to get the division. I'll be reminding you of it for several weeks. Okay.

I hope, uh, I hope, I hope there's a ticket on that. Uh, we'll Brinson senior NFL writer, cbssports.com pick six podcast moderator. Uh, I saw one ranking had the Eagles as the best team in the NFL.

They are four. No, uh, I think they might be the best team in the NFC, but I don't think they're better than the best teams in the AFC. Um, other than the fact that Jalen hurts has become, I will say a better version of Jimmy Garoppolo. Well, I mean, Jimmy T can't run like that, but I don't look at Jalen hurts as being anything other than he's a very solid quarterback, but the running element is what, or maybe the better way to put it is that he's a poor man's Josh Allen.

Yeah, I think that works. He's improved his accuracy. Um, he's not as, he doesn't have nearly the arm streak for Josh Allen obviously, but he's improved his accuracy. And maybe that's what makes him performance Josh Allen. I mean, as a runner, he is, he is a load man. Like he, like he doesn't look, you don't think he's as strong and as thick as he is. Um, maybe that, maybe the comp is like a, a better running Donovan McNabb.

I don't know, like he decides, Oh, the size kind of reminds me of now a little bit. The year was obviously the cop there works, but I think the Allen thing is kind of accurate cause he's so dangerous in the red zone. Um, and yeah, he's not like super speedy, but he's plenty fast enough and he, when he gets rolling, he can just, he can, you know, he's got great rushing moves.

He sees the field really well. And I think like my whole premise of putting the Eagles in the Superbowl before the season was Jalen Hirsch has to take a small step forward. And if he does that, the depth on the offensive line, the depth on the defensive line, the talent at the skill positions will allow this Eagles team to be, you know, and plus I didn't think the division would be very good. It's been better than I thought through four weeks, but you know, I mean, but the Cowboys and the giants can be favorite tigers, but like, you know, all of those things happen and hurts me in a much bigger step as a pastor than I anticipated. So I agree with you. I think the Eagles are the best team in the NFC.

They're probably number three. Like, I mean, you know, Eagles Ravens, I'm probably taking Eagles. That'd be a fun, my Superbowl would be a fun Superbowl to watch by the way. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Total shootout.

But yeah, I think if it were, you know, bills or chiefs versus Eagles in the Superbowl, the bills and chiefs are five point favorites, more than likely. All right. Final thing. The dolphins. I don't even know who fired the doctor who cleared Tua doesn't matter to me who fired the doctor who cleared Tua to go back in, in the game against Buffalo, by the way, Tua Tongavailoa was ruled out for Miami's game against the Jets coming up on Sunday.

But very noble of them. Yes. Does it, does it take, did it take a medical expert though, to know that Tua shouldn't have played and have we basically just scapegoated the doctor to cover every, and I, I have such a problem with that. Yeah. I mean, like what it took to figure that out was the two eyeballs, right? Maybe one or like a, I mean, maybe you could have done it like through the, like some sort of, I don't know, descriptive manner kaleidoscopes, those kaleidoscopes you'd get, like you just shake it and you're looking through it and it's like 4 billion colors and you don't know what you're watching.

Yes. Through that we could have seen the Tua shouldn't have come back or somebody could just told you like, just sat on air, like Tua would look, Tua was walking around the field like Brinson on Sunday morning in Clemson, you know, like, and like, people were like, Oh, like get him out of the game immediately. Like this guy, this guy has, she's like head trauma. You know, I think that the, the neurology thing is definitely escaping that move. It's well, I think to me what happened is the NFL got too comfortable with its protocols and its policies and in the sense that like, it used to be, if you were even remotely close to being like, if you look concussed, you would, you would be in the protocol or you would, you know, you would, and you probably weren't playing the next week. Like it would be a shock where you would have the concussion protocol played the next week.

Um, I think the NFL had done a pretty good job of it for a while and maybe got too lax or like, and then some teams felt like they could push the envelope or, you know, the thing too is like, you don't necessarily test positive for a concussion if you have a concussion all the time. Like that's, it's, that's the problem with that independent, you know, the way it is, it's just great. It's a gray area. It's not a, literally it's a gray area.

It's your brain. It's not a black and white situation. Oftentimes when you're going through these protocols and so it can be a situation where, you know, um, two, I had a concussion, didn't, didn't test positive for a concussion and the dolphins in a game they really wanted to win, brought them back out there.

And so it's like, it's not like a, there's no one person to blame. It's just that clearly the dolphins who, by the way, I've been involved in like 15 scandals over the last three or four years, I mean, just stop getting involved in scandals. Like they, you know, it's, to me, it seems that somebody needs to step in from the dolphins or from the medical staff, the training staff, the coaching staff, the front office. I mean, the owner suspended, so he can't step in, somebody to step in and say, Hey look, he can't play this week. You know, like he, we, you know, this game is in four days, you know, he, we, you know, you're watching the tape, man.

Everybody's watching the tape. I don't think there's anything nefarious on the half of Mike McDaniel or anybody like that, but I do think something, you know, the NFL does need to adjust these protocols now that, you know, it's like when something like this can slip through the cracks, it needs to change. Will Brinson, um, all, as you said, they just needed one eye, one eye to know that he should not have gone back onto the field at any point, uh, in that game. And I don't know that one, I don't know that Sunday begat Thursday, uh, but Thursday, I'm sure was a whole lot, but the danger is, is like, if you, if you don't allow your brain to recover from a, the first one concussion, you suffer another one.

Like that is, I mean, it makes obvious medical sense, but like that is the exponential nature of that. The head trauma is, is, is there no question about it. You are the man. I appreciate your time well, and putting up with our technical, uh, issues, uh, I'll talk to you next week. All right. See you next week. You got it. See you next time on the show.