Charles Davis | NFL on CBS Analyst

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One year upgrade requires financing, qualifying, device and upgrading in good condition after six months with half paid off. Charles Davis, who is part of the NFL and CBS. He works with Ian Eagle and Evan Washburn. Saw Bangles and Browns in week one. Coming up in week number three has Panthers and Seahawks and he is one of our favorites here on the show.

With the loss of Nick Chubb, Charles, can you even summarize what that means for the Cleveland Browns? It's hard to do it, Amy. It really is because all the buzz words that we use all the time and, you know, we're all part of the same establishment, right? And I don't know about you, but there's times when I'm watching games, listening games, whatever, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to say those things. And my game pops up and I'm saying those exact things.

Oh, who am I kidding, right? We're all immersed in it. We all speak that language, that lingo.

So when I say all of those things, here it comes. He is their identity. He is their tone setter. He is the guy that makes things right when you need to calm things down out there.

He's all of those things for that ball club and allows others to shine brighter because of what he carries on his shoulders right between the two and the four. Now, does that mean that they are totally done? No, absolutely not. Will there be backups that jump up? Well, they had one that jumped up the other night and ran for over a hundred yards to a 69-yard touchdown spread.

All those things kick in. But the biggest thing is that Nick Chubb was going to hold things down for them, Amy, until Deshaun Watson got right. OK, look, you give up three first round picks for a guy. You're not giving them up for a guy to be just the starter for you.

You give them up for a guy to be an all pro, to be a Pro Bowl quarterback. He's not playing to that level yet and they need that to happen soon. And he's going to have to jump it up now without the help of Nick Chubb. And that's going to be even tougher for Cleveland. We saw this in week one with the loss of Aaron Rodgers, now a significant impact with Nick Chubb being out. What needs to happen in the locker room, Charles, for these teams to move forward as best they can? It's the hardest thing, Amy, because the empathetic side of you is, oh, man, you know, you want to be there for your brother that's down.

You want to make sure that he knows you care. The flip side is, if you're spending all your time doing that, you're not prepping for the next ball game. Right.

You have to change it and move on. I had a coach tell me when I was playing in college and, you know, sometimes out of context, people look at you like, what the heck were you guys doing out there? He said, he said, football's Darwinian, man.

It's survival of the fittest. And if that person isn't there for that Sunday or that Saturday or whatever day your game is, guess what? You can't worry about it. It has to keep moving.

Okay. I remember this. I remember this like it was yesterday. I played in the Japan Bowl. Do you remember the Japan Bowl? You know, it was the Hula Bowl, the East, West, right? Remember all of the blue-gray game, all those great senior All-Star games? A lot of them were gone by the wayside for the reasons we know, right?

I'm in Japan and we're on a bullet train. A bunch of these great All-Star players, a few of them that became Pro Bowl, All-Pro players in the NFL the whole deal, right? We were just talking about our various programs, things that happened. You know what the one universal was?

The universal. I said, okay, quick question, everybody. There must have been 30 of us sitting there in this section. Somebody goes down the practice field. What do you guys do when that person goes down?

It was almost, I mean, it was like unconscious. You know what they all said? Move the ball. You move the ball 20 yards, keep going. And then my next question was, all right, does your head coach check on the person?

Is he a starter? You see where I'm going? And I don't mean to be callous, and I know out of context, people are looking at it like, what's wrong with you people? You have to go play. The game's going to come the next week. It has to happen that way. To me, this is a microcosm and it doesn't really fit perfectly because DeMar Hamlin is so far of an outlier. But Buffalo, unfortunately, got jammed up in terms of they needed to move forward.

But how can you when something like that, that traumatic happens? Because when you and I went to the locker room to interview him from that day forward, every question we asked the Buffalo player had a DeMar Hamlin tint to it, every single one of them. And you saw the emotional exhaustion as that season went on. And you never heard Buffalo complain.

You never heard them make an excuse. But I don't think there's any denying that as that season went on, it was harder and harder for that team to go do it. We saw them exhausted at the end of the year. They outlasted Miami and then Cincinnati came in and whacked them. I'm not taking any credit from Cincinnati, but that Buffalo team was mentally exhausted. I guess the only benefit would be then that it happens early in the season where a lot of teams are still attempting to find their footing, but it's still heartbreaking for Aaron and for Nick specifically.

And the biggest thing, Amy, is who's the replacement? Football may be Darwinian and you have to go on, but are you going on with a player of the same caliber, the same milk? A number of times we've seen guys jump in and play and play at a great level that maybe wasn't expected and the team can still function.

And sometimes you just can't replace that guy. We're excited to spend a few minutes with Charles Davis from the NFL and CBS, his partner Ian Eagle, and also Evan Washburn on the sidelines. And you just got done with Chiefs and Jaguars, Charles. And when you see the Chiefs turn the ball over three times in the first half and barely managed to outscore the Jags, and it's really about the defense, what tells you that that team can still be world class and maintain or get back to that level where they have been for the past five years? Because they sat number 15 playing quarterback and he took on the challenge last year of no Tyreek, right?

We're going to play really small ball. You know, last year I think he had like one touchdown pass where the ball traveled 20 yards or more in the air. What? And you think about his arm, but you know how people started playing him, Amy. You remember he was such a bomber there by start saying, okay, let's see if you can be patient. And he struggled with that for a little while. And then all of a sudden patients took root and he won an MVP last year without being the bomber. He figured it out. How do we have people going to play me?

How are they going to do it? And he made this adjustment accordingly with his receivers. He's taking on the same challenge again this year because again, it's a kind of a new crop of receivers. And opening night without Travis Kelce, we saw what happened.

But guess what? There was never a doubt in his mind. He was coming back to them. There's never doubt in his mind that we're going to go back and do it again. Andy Reid set the tone. He was like, we got to put them back on the horse because we can't cut seven guys. And all of a sudden, here we go again. We just have to help them get better.

And I'll be darned. He did. He did on Sunday. He kept going to guys.

Kedarius, Tony got involved. Sky more caught a touchdown pass and got involved. And you remember they had key drops in the game against Detroit. Justin Watson had a great catch and then a fumble. He came back and kept throwing him the football.

The kid is undaunted in terms of that. And he understands it's going to be a 17 game season and I'm going to need these guys if we're going to have any chance of being the can say cheese that we want to be. And oh, by the way, 87 showed up again and he was a little bit rusty. You know, he wasn't quite himself. He dropped. There was one in the end zone. He catches all day. He didn't catch that one. I think that he was a little frustrated because he didn't play the opener. And, you know, I saw Andy Reid's comment this week.

He said he had Travis was fighting Travis out there because he was trying to do too much. I think he'll settle in and be fine now. So I don't worry about it.

15. He makes things work. If you were willing to work with him. Gosh, he's so smart. I'm always struck by that. Every time I watch them play is how smart he is and how quickly he can process, which of course, are two tools that high profile quarterbacks need. Well, what about the Bengals? You saw them in week number one. We know Joe Burrow still kind of dealing with the calf.

They only have one offensive touchdown in eight quarters. Yeah. And, you know, their thing is the explosion just isn't there tomorrow.

Chase talked about it this week. Hey, we got sort of ball down field. We got to go make some plays.

Well, people are going to play them. You know what we call on defense top down defense. All right. We won't make you throw it short rally up, try and make the tackle in the whole deal. But I think the Cincinnati at times is going to try and force the issue, try and get some favorable matchups, try and get some people to one on one and put it up there anyway, because Joe Burrow doesn't mind throwing the goal ball.

All right. And he's going to throw it to chase. He's going to throw it to T Higgins.

He wrote that's not going to bother him at all because he figures his guys are going to come down with it or no one is. But they are very static on offense. Amy, when you watch them play and you've seen them a bunch of times. Right. Right. Zach Taylor comes out of the Sean McVeigh tree. A lot of movement.

Right. Every lot of guys, a lot of motion, jet sweeps. You don't see any of that with Cincinnati. And a lot of that is because they the their quarterback, Joe Burrow, processes to use the word you used on my home so well that they don't worry about all that other stuff. They just let Joe kind of win pre and post snap. I'm interested to see if they come up with a few things moving forward, maybe a few more bunch formations to try and get guys off the line of scrimmage. Some isolation stuff to get Jamar Chase going. Zach Taylor is very smart, very, very good offensive mind.

I just I like his old demeanor. They have a chance to change history. And I know that sounds really, really hyperbolic, right? But here's what I'm saying. Last year, they were 0 and 2 to start the season and went to the FC Championship game, made the playoffs, obviously. Never in NFL history has a team gone back to back years, 0 and 2 starts and made the playoffs the second year. Cincinnati trying to change that history. Yeah.

All right. You have a background in scouting. You work with the Senior Bowl. I know you do a lot of draft coverage. You have Bryce Young this weekend with the Panthers. But thinking about those rookie quarterbacks, Anthony Richardson in concussion protocol, we know that CJ Stroud still working it out. What stands out about what you've seen from these guys so far?

Well, I'll start with Stroud. He's playing to his strengths. He's another guy very smart about what he was doing with the football. He took great care of it at Ohio State, very accurate thrower of the ball.

I think we've seen that. And Amy, he's doing it without his offensive line, right? He didn't have either of his starting tackles last week. He didn't have Kenyon Green, who was the first-round picket guard last year. Two Scruggs who was drafted to be the starting center. None of them played.

Didn't see the kid ruffled. He dealt with it. Threw the ball accurately when he had the opportunity the whole deal. Okay, he's got some stuff to work on, but don't they all? Anthony Richardson, I think Shane Steichen, the head coach, and his staff have done a masterful job of emphasizing what he does best early.

But here's the issue. Two games now, he's been knocked out of the ballgame from hits. In college, you're indestructible.

In college, he's Robocop, to date myself. In the NFL, those guys hit you. And so two ballgames he doesn't finish because he's a heavy part of the run game. I don't think you go away from that because that's what he does best now. But he's got to continue to work on accuracy, footwork, being able to get rid of the football so he's not taking hit after hit after hit, despite the fact his running ability is really good for them. For Bryce Young, it's twofold to me. One, I think he needs some receivers who can uncover and get a little separation downfield. And two, they've got to start throwing the ball downfield. I mean, his average throw downfield right now is like four yards.

Okay, that's not very far. So they've got to work on that. It's not all him playing check down Charlie. It's a lot of it is he looks downfield and there is no one open.

Guys who he needs, he needs DJ Charkat full health, right? He needs Terrace Marshall to uncover downfield. You know, those guys have to be able to make some plays for him. Adam Thielen, Hayden Hurst, they're probably his best targets right now.

And so he'll work underneath until that happens. But his yardage, way down, all those things. And don't be surprised if you see Caroline was starting to run the ball a little bit more. I heard he had a little bit of an ankle thing. We'll see if he's able to go this weekend.

But poise, all those things that we liked about him coming out of school, Amy. Yes, still fully in evidence with this young kid. I believe in Bryce Young. Yeah, Charles Davis, NFL and CBS has the game between the Panthers and the Seahawks coming up on Sunday, week three already. It's after hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. We talk so much about the Bill Belichick legacy for good reason. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but there are a couple of other coaches that have long tenures in the NFL. John Harbaugh in Baltimore and Pete Carroll in Seattle. Do we not give this man enough credit for the fact that he can coach a water bottle and a pair of socks?

No, you know how it works, right? Because Coach Belichick, and rightfully so, gets most of it because he had that run of going to, what, ten AFC championship games? Going to, you know, six or seven Super Bowls? You get the whole idea, right?

So that kind of run puts you right at the top of the mountain. But then you look at the consistency, you look at teams getting to the playoffs, being factors. Pete Carroll won one, arguably. One play called away from another one.

Or one execution away from another one, however you want to look at it. You know, all those things. And by the way, people forget. He went to the playoffs twice with New England when he was the head coach there. He only got the one year in New York when Leon Hess owned the team and I think he went 8-8 or something and he fired him.

And Mr. Hess said, you know, I'm old, I don't have time to wait. And he hired Richie Kotite and that didn't go so well. So it's not like Pete Carroll, you know, was a failure before. People tried to point it that way. That's really not true if you check the record.

It's really a misnomer on what was going on. But boy, after USC, he's had this thing figured out. And yeah, big time deal. How about John Harbaugh? Five starters missing last week. Five key starters.

And they find a way to win the ball game. Don't tell me that man can't coach. Oh, he definitely can. And he still loves it too. That's what makes me smile is that he still has great spirit. Totally all in on it.

And that's the thing about the best ones. Andy Reid, you know, Mike Tomlin. These guys are all in and they love what they are doing. I feel like a commercial now.

They love what they're doing and it shows. It's After Hours with Amy Lawrence on CBS Sports Radio. Charles Davis along with Ian Eagle and Evan Washburn will be on the call on the NFL on CBS as the Panthers battle the Seahawks in Week 3 this Sunday. And Charles, got to ask you about the buzz coming out of Boulder, as I call it. What's your reaction to what Deion is doing with the Buffaloes and to all of college football watching him now? Yeah, I'm pulling up a chair with my popcorn. I'm enjoying the show.

I'm enjoying watching it. But I go back to something that I said right in the beginning when he took the Jackson State job. You remember all the consternation that was kicked up then. Oh, he hasn't coached. He hasn't done this. I've known Deion Sanders for a long time now. Would I sit here and say that Deion Sanders would call me a bosom buddy? I doubt that because we got together that way, but I worked with him at NFL Network. I observed what he was doing. Every offseason he was coaching kids and being involved in the whole thing. Then he coached in high school. He did a lot of things that prepared him for this job that he never got credit for. I said, he's not just rolling out of an office and say, yeah, what the heck, I'll coach now. He had been preparing for it the entire time anyway.

He had a plan and now he's executed it along the way, continues to do it. And he connects with these kids like nobody's business. He absolutely connects with them. And his staff connects with them. They're well coached. They're well organized. Look, he's won two tight ball games now.

Everything isn't just flash and dash. They go to TCU and win a tight ball game where they execute late and get it done. Colorado State, they were supposed to blow them out.

They didn't. They made the big plays late to bring themselves back and give themselves a chance and then find a way to win it. When you win those kind of games, Amy, that tells me something about a program. Tells me something about a group.

You don't just do that by jumping around and playing music, hit my theme music and all that. No, that team has some grit and some toughness to it. That's been infused by him and his coaching staff and the type of kid that they brought into the program. So it's a lot of fun to watch as far as I'm concerned. And my goodness, we're talking about Deion Sanders on Saturdays. We're talking about Deion Sanders on Sundays where people are like, you know, what if he wants to coach in the NFL now? That's what he has done with it. That comes up all the time.

He says no at this moment, but people are talking about it. He is the marvel of college football right now. And I would say, Amy, he's the marvel of football period right now.

Oh, so much fun. And somehow there's always a camera anytime he goes off on one of his epic rants. Let's be honest about it. Deion has known how to promote since he came, you know, since he popped up and said, hello, my name's Deion for the first time. I remember reading an article about him and Gabrielle Reese back when they were at Florida State and he was teaching her about branding. And they were at Florida State. So this is not anything unusual or anything new. So, and Amy, if you just permit me one second here, we lost Buddy Tevens, the head coach at Dartmouth yesterday.

Yes. And I got nobody over the years and he took me in as a person and part of his inner circle. Incredible family, incredible coach, incredible innovator. He saw what he's done with these these remote control dummies for tackling instead of them tackling each other, trying to help save the game. What he's done about inclusion with with women on his coaching staff with real responsibility. And a good number of them have gone on to the NFL and other college programs.

He didn't just bring them out, bring them in and say, hey, guess what? I've got a woman on my staff. She had real responsibility.

Coach, you know, she she did all the things that were supposed you were supposed to do. And you can see them out there. We lost Buddy and it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a long time. It's going to hurt me forever. But boy, I'm so thankful.

I got to know him, get to meet him, get to be around him, get to be a part of it. And the world of football. It's a big, big loss losing Buddy Stevens.

And it's felt from the commissioner's office in the NFL all the way through college football and all through the rest of the ranks. Thank you for sharing your heart with us and a few words about Buddy. You're right.

And thank you for that time, Amy. Absolutely. Part of the NFL on CBS.

Charles Davis, Iron Eagle, Evan Washburn. Man, it's off to its best start in over a decade. Nearly 20 million viewers. What a shock.

The NFL is a juggernaut. It's great to catch up with you, Charles. Thank you so much. We'll do it again soon. I look forward to it, Amy.

Thank you so much. You take care of continued success. Imagine you're looking at a balancing scale with everything you do for other people on one side and everything you do for yourself on the other side.

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