What is Will Brinson potentially falling for...??

All right, Will Brinson, senior NFL writer, CBS Sports.com pick six podcast moderator.

All right, I'm done being mad at UCLA. How are you, man? You have no hat today. No hat. No hat. You put it on in the first commercial break.

I wasn't doing this. I'm really good at scheduling stuff. And so I've scheduled somehow a hit on CBS Sports HQ in the middle of my live podcast at one o'clock. And so I'm going to attempt to leave the podcast dressed semi nicely, record a live hit and come back to continue the podcast in.

It's really like Evil Knievel. So who's the podcast with today? Who would be the most cantankerous possible person to have on a podcast? Oh no, Pete Prisco. Oh yes. Oh, it's Prisco.

It's Prisco today. Very good. That's pick six podcast, daily NFL podcast to listen to all the time.

And I appreciated Monday because this is where I wanted to start anyway. We're basically at this point, we're looking at the playoffs. We have a bunch of teams that can clinch playoff, actually can clinch playoff bids. Buffalo with a win over the Dolphins this week, clinches a playoff spot. Part of that is because there seems to be a bunch of bad competing for the last playoff spot in each conference.

And maybe that makes sense since we have almost half of the teams that are going to make the playoffs. But I want to talk about, I want to start with the team that Buffalo is going to play, which is Miami. And I know the weather's going to be bad, but I think that's a little overblown.

I think it's, I mean, it's bad. I mean, no team's used to playing in the snow. Buffalo might be, but no team's really used to playing in the snow.

These guys don't want to play in it if they can avoid it. Could Miami miss the playoffs? Yes. I mean, really? It seems like a lot has to happen. Yeah.

Like a bunch of stuff has to happen, but it's totally possible. I mean, the Chargers to me are really interesting in the sense that, I mean, for the, I believe the first time all season long, they had Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, and Austin Eckler, who by the way, friend of the podcast or Pixics podcast on our YouTube channel. You wouldn't skip out on Austin Eckler to do a live hit on CBS Sports HQ.

No, I probably would not. But that was the first time they really had all their weapons on the field at one time. And you could see it in like, I don't, I don't really trust Brandon Staley and Joe Lombardi necessarily to call the game the way that it should to emphasize Justin Herbert's skill set. But I mean, some of those throws he made on Sunday night, like the one was like, he threw it to Keenan Allen, who wasn't open. And Keenan Allen like caught it and then pointed it was like, you, you.

And Herbert went back like, yeah, bro, I don't know either. I think that that team to me has the potential and I can't believe I'm falling for this Charlie Brown football. You are. I am.

I'm telling you, I'm a sucker. But like, they have the potential to really like make a run. And I think it would be at the expense of Miami. On the other hand, Miami's well coached. They've got a good quarterback who is a good decision maker. Not a great quarterback, but a good, good quarterback. I agree.

Good run game. They're, they're on this three game road trip too, by the way, like at San Francisco, at the Chargers and at Buffalo, like that's, that's really hard. I mean, who, who's the team that's winning all three of those? You gotta win one of them, though. Yeah, I know you gotta win one of them. Here's the thing about Miami. This is why I think ultimately, first of all, at eight and five, you probably have to go.

No. I mean, if you win, if you win one, you're probably a playoff team. I don't know about the AFC in the NFC nine gets you into the chargers. And if they lose to the Jets again, then that's a problem. If the Jets can finish nine and eight, which I'm not convinced. To clarify, you can get in with nine in the AFC. But like, to me, if you get to nine in the NFC, you are going to get in.

Oh, yes. Somebody's going to be under 500. We know somebody in the NFC is going to be under 500 because ain't nobody going to be over 500 in the NFC South. Here's the thing about the Chargers, and this is where I worry where I'm anticipating that we'll see a charging here in the last four weeks, because even with all those weapons back, if Tyree, right, they're very good when they have all those weapons, but they still needed Tyree kill to ultimately get hurt. Otherwise, I think Miami would have figured out a way to score enough. They fumbled the outside kick. Please, please.

We're dying to charge you this up. They tried to look real quick about that game. I thought that when the Chargers went for it on fourth and I was at fourth and two or fourth and goal from the two, I actually liked the idea.

I know it was just ripped on social media. I mean, Twitter was having a field day with that. But what good does a field goal do to you when you know that Miami's offense because they didn't know Tyree kill was hurt?

Miami's going to score. Field goal didn't do anything. I liked the fact that they went for it.

I really did. So, I mean, a lot of times these things are out of results base, right? Of course. If they get it, it's like, oh my God, look at Brandon Staley, this genius who went for it and got the touchdown and now they want, you know, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's just how it works.

I mean, so yeah, I mean, I don't really have a problem with it. Again, like my bigger concern is the play calling and the utilization of Justin Herbert and whether or not they're willing to stretch the field with those weapons and let him like accentuate what he does best, which is throw the deep ball. By the way, Austin Eckler confirmed. Phillip Rivers throws a better swing pass than Justin Herbert. Well, that was the problem on that fourth and two pass is that the pass was bad. It wasn't in front. I forget if he threw it to number one, he threw it to number one and it wasn't in front of him. And that's why number one fell down when he, when he caught the ball, which is maybe also a number one really bad Austin Powers movie.

He threw it right to number one and it really, the pass was number two. And there we go. Okay.

We spent way too much time talking about the Los Angeles, formerly San Diego Chargers there. All right. Let me ask you about the Panthers real quick. Oh gosh, no.

Oh gosh. They're one game out of first. Do we agree that Tampa is awful? Yes.

Okay. That doesn't mean they're not going to win the division, but I mean, I keep, I keep catching crap on the podcast because I like Ryan Wilson's killing me every week. Cause I'm like, look, Tampa is not good, but they're going to the playoffs and they have Tom Brady agreed.

And all those things are factual. I mean, would you bet against Tom Brady? Like Tom Brady with three, just win three games.

Who knows? Like we've seen twice. Are they, I mean, they could win three games, Cincinnati at home. They could win that, but if you're Cincinnati, I mean, I don't think it's crazy to say the Panthers could win this division.

It would just be gross. Yeah. Well, the Panthers have to win three games, more than like you have to win three games. And one of those needs to be the game in Tampa, which the way I've watched Tampa over the last few weeks, they could absolutely win that game.

Carolina's playing look, Carolina is not good either, but they have a formula right now that will work no matter who they play against as long as they can be effective running the ball. So 538 does a really good job with the playoff percentages. That's the one thing they do a good job with it. Yeah, really, seriously.

That's the only thing I can go to 538 for. I was actually, I was like surprised. I was like, why is ABC news up there?

I was like, Oh, right, right, right. So the, the Bengals are favored in Tampa, right? And the Panthers are favored at home against the Steelers. So if we assume chocolates, and that's not a fair assumption given the 2022 NFL season, but if we assume chocolates and the Bengals win and the Steelers win, it would make Tampa Bay 50% to win the division and Carolina 46% to win the division. I mean, just I like, I kind of want Steve Wilkes to win this division to get in the playoffs, win a playoff game and make David Tepper fire him. Come on Dave, really? Well, look, I am, I am increasingly convinced that Steve Wilkes will be the next head coach of the Carolina Panthers. Really?

And you and I have been talking about this for a few weeks now. As soon as he sent Robbie with a Y Anderson into the locker room in LA, as soon as that happened, I was Steve, I was team Wilkes. The, he, I think that he's the perfect choice for them. I really do. I think this job matters to him as a Charlotte guy.

A lot. And I think he has, he has the pulse of the team. And in college, I would never let your players make the decision. That's how we got Carl Torbush as the head coach at North Carolina, because the players loved him.

They carried him off the field when they won the ball game after Mac Brown left for Texas. Hiring an interim is generally a bad idea, but I'm kind of with you on this one a little bit. Yeah. Maybe a lot of it.

Yeah. Look, I think the players are absolutely in love with this guy as their coach. I think he treats the, he is, I'm not trying to disparage Matt Ruhle here, but Steve Wilkes is the adult that these guys needed. And I think he's the perfect choice, but I don't think you have to make the playoffs. Well, I think that one, he is genuinely regarded in that locker room with the fan base, with the city of Charlotte as like a great leader, a fan favorite and a good person. I'm not comparing him to anybody, but you know, a lot of times, like I don't like hiring an interim head coach full time because I don't think it usually works.

It really doesn't work out. However, Steve Wilkes was hired by the Arizona Cardinals after a wildly successful season as defensive coordinator of the Panthers. He got the rawest of deals possible. He was stuck with Josh Rosen. His general manager was not present for the first few months.

And that's a whole different story. And he was fired after one year. Like, how could you possibly prove yourself as a head coach one year in when the organization is admitting that the quarterback, the first quarterback they gave you is a failure because they drafted another guy first overall the following year. And that whole thing was tied together with the opportunity to draft Kyler Murray and then bring in the offensive guru in Clif Kingsbury. By the way, Kyler Murray and Clif Kingsbury share an agent.

Share an agent. And I think share distinction as being not all that great. Week 15 in the NFL kicks off tonight. 49ers are playing at Seattle, San Francisco's three point favorite. Third straight game. We will see Brock Purdy play.

This is the second time he will be the starter. And Seattle is getting Kenneth Walker back, I believe. So their running game should be whole. We'll see if the Seahawks can get back inside the playoffs.

Seattle has been a playoff team for most of the year, but kind of falling on hard times of late. Back to Will Brinson, still not wearing a hat. And that's fine. He's got to be on CBS Sports HQ.

So he needs his hair looking right. All right. Let's let's do this. Also pick six podcasts. There's a massive esports thing happening in downtown Raleigh this weekend. No, I was not. Why would I be aware of that? I actually saw the wrong former host of the Adam and Joe show.

Joe would know that that's happening. I say, Hey, what's up with these esports? No idea. All right. So four weeks ago, there is no chance that we thought that the highlight of Sunday's NFL schedule was going to be the Detroit Lions at the New York Jets. No way. The Lions I think are good. I'm not so sure. The Jets have a great defense.

See how healthy they are. But that's a heck of a game. Imagine if you went like, you know, you're you jump in the DeLorean to travel back to lie 2022 and you show up and you see Adam Gold, July 2022, Adam Gold. And you've got a sports almanac in your hands. And you're like, listen, fella, this Jets Lions game in week 15 is probably going to be the biggest playoff decider of the season.

July 2022, Adam Gold will call the cops. Absolutely. I mean, like I do. I mean, it's insane. And the crazy thing is the week after that, the Lions play the Panthers in a playoff game.

What is happening? The Lions actually are going to determine playoff spots for a lot of teams, including themselves, obviously. I am intrigued by this game in the sense that Jared Goff's been playing some awesome footballs, man. But if you go and look at the game that they they beat the I think they beat the crap out of the Giants in the medalist.

They did. But if you look at it, they ran the ball really, really well. And Goff didn't do a whole lot in the past game. What if the Jets run defense clogs up Detroit and forces Goff to win the game on his own? Can he do that in the cold outdoors in mid-December?

I don't know. Right. And the Jets, two cornerbacks. And Reid, right? Reid's the other corner, right? Jets are probably going to have the offensive and defensive rookie of the year.

Garrett Wilson's really, really good. But the problem, the problem with the Jets is that their offense either takes a while like it did against Minnesota and really never got going. And it did against Buffalo.

They had had chances to win both of these games late, haven't been able to close the deal. I don't know the health of Quinnen Williams, the defensive, you know, their star defensive lineman, former Alabama guy, because he hurt his calf. My guess is he probably won't play. They shouldn't play him. He's like a borderline defensive player of the year candidate right now. I mean, he is a defensive player of the year candidate right now. I mean, they really need to play him against the Lions in order to win the game. But Quinnen Williams is a special dude and he's turned it off this year in a big way. I wouldn't want to risk him.

So I'd be curious how they do that. I think they're very, very lucky that it's only a calf because it looked like it could have been something serious. It was a non-contact injury.

So everybody immediately went ACL like it happened to Kyler Murray. I was not, I did not watch the game. I have people, friends of mine who watch, actually been watching all the time. They're not even Jets fans.

Like a mutual friend of ours sent me a text the other day. It went, these jets are good. And I went, I haven't really watched them. I mean, I sort of, when I can see a little bit, I see a little bit, but how about, I mean, did you jinx, right? You went, you became an Aaron Rogers fan and now Roger stinks and the jets are good.

What are you concerned about? Unlike William H Macy, I'm the cooler. Could you great movie, by the way, if you've seen the movie, the cooler, of course, could you, could you maybe be like a Carolina, Carolina basketball fan for hire?

I should, I should, I should hire myself out. Look, when you're, when you grow up a Mets man, right? I mean, it's, it's sort of, it's like being a state fan.

That's fans of state fans. Very similar. I think there's, there's some, there's some similarities there. All right. So these were great. Yeah. For a hot minute and they didn't get enough out of it.

Just 86. They were the better. They should have been, it should have been great in 87 and 88 and 89. I'm a nineties Braves kid. I mean, you won every year. You won 14 straight divisions. What are you complaining about? 14 straight divisions.

All right. Here's the thing about the NFL this year. There are 12 teams, just 12 that have positive point differentials. There may be 12 is sort of a normal number. Maybe if we looked at it year after year after year, cause you know, 16 is the mid, but only 12 teams have positive point differential. The jets and lions are two of them.

And right now, neither of them is inside the playoff cut line. What does that tell us? Does it tell us anything? Or because we still have four games to play. It's not even smart to look at it. No, no, no. Point differential was always good to look at.

I'm just now, I'm looking at it right now. And I mean, I need to go to NFL duck. Sometimes you use NFL Jesus for the, or if you're about NFL Jesus, it's a, it's our Lord and savior. It's like the information system. But I mean, when you look at it, I mean, these net points are crazy. Like the bills are plus one 32, right? The 49ers are plus one 30 something. The Titans are minus 35 and winning their division. Yeah.

The bucket moment. Buccaneers are bad. The whole division is the entire AFC East is positive point differential. The entire AFC East. The entire AFC South is negative. Yeah. I mean, there's no, there's no teams over 500 in that division.

So again, it makes sense. The Vikings at 10 and three are minus one. How is that possible? That seems statistically impossible. Obviously it's not because they are minus one. And I actually think that if you, if you pay attention to point differential, Dallas's game at Jacksonville, Jacksonville is dead. Even there's zero, uh, Dallas's game at Jacksonville. Cause I don't think Jacksonville.

I mean, they're, they're out of it, but, um, I mean, what are they? Jacksonville is in it. They're five and eight.

The times are seven and six, and they got to play each other in week 17. Okay. So they're in it for the division. That's cool.

I was thinking about for a, uh, for a wildcard probably out of it. Yeah. Dallas, we're going to find out Dallas's position in the playoffs is pretty much set. They're going to be the number five seed and they'll play at the Panthers in the playoffs when the Panthers win the division. Um, but whether or not they can win at Jacksonville, I think tells us a ton about what Dallas really is. No.

Well, I would typically agree with you in the sense that, well, I mean, I do agree with you. They should go down to Jacksonville as a four and a half point favorite, which is a little smelly and like, take care of business, go in there. You run Tony Pollard up and down, and then Zeke dives in the interim for the touchdowns to make Jerry happy. In fact, there was a couple of passes.

You get some pass rush from Trevor Lawrence, but you know, what's next week for Dallas, right? Is that Philly? Oh, it's Philly. And I believe it is at four 25 Eastern on CBS Christmas Eve. Oh, Christmas Eve.

Oh boy. I mean, now look, a lot of people, you know, better people than me will be in church, but a lot of people in Texas will not be in church because they'll be watching that Cowboys game at four 25 Eastern. They're going to go to the lunch service on Christmas Eve because that is prime time. It's in Dallas. And it is, Adam, to me, it's like, it's, I think, I think Sully said this on the podcast this week. It's like, it's kind of a, they're probably not going to win the division, but it's sort of like a, Hey, if we see each other in the playoffs, we can handle our business type of game. And I think, so I think in that sense, it means something to Dallas. So I sort of wonder could they be looking ahead a bit?

See, I don't even think they have to be looking ahead. I think Jacksonville might be a problem for them. Oh, I think Jacksonville is going to win. I think Jacksonville is going to beat Dallas this week.

Yeah. So that to me, that says everything about the Cowboys. I thought the Cowboys three weeks ago were the second best team in the NFC. And now I'm not sure where they are in the NFC. They just have not been, they haven't played well. They haven't been fit.

I don't know. Philly is the best team in the NFC. We, we agree on that.

We have agreed on that probably for the last eight weeks. Um, San Francisco, maybe it doesn't matter who the quarterback is. I mean, if, if it, I mean, look, if it, it's, I mean, it's, it's just hard to say out loud, like the second best team in the NFC is quarterback by Brock Purdy.

Right. It doesn't really pass the, you know, go stand in front of a mirror and say, I dare you to say that on CBS sports HQ at the top of the hour. Um, no, I mean, it's like, but like, I don't think the Vikings are the second best team because they're nine and one score games and they just got blitzed by the lions. The lions are the second best team in the NFC. Now will they make the playoffs? I think the lions are the team.

Nobody wants to play. Um, I don't disagree. By the way, if the Titans lose to the chargers right away in Los Angeles, the chargers have to win that game.

They, I don't think they have a choice. And the Jaguars beat Dallas at home. That division gets real, real spicy real, real quick.

I mean, the, the results from this weekend got it all, uh, very spicy. I said a few weeks ago, actually, I said it when the jets, this might've been just comedy. Comedy because I watched the end of the jets Patriots game. And it is one of the times where I've totally divorced myself from being a jets fan. And I've called it a recovering jets fan.

It was the only time this year. I will admit this to suffering a near relapse because I watched Robert Sala play for a tie at the end of the game, like letting the clock run out when the jets were like at the 30 yard line there, the minus 30, I mean, they could have got into field goal range because there was well over a minute left. He played for a tie as though a tie got you a point like this were hockey. And I just couldn't figure out it was at new England. I couldn't figure out why you were doing this because you still have to go try to win the game in overtime.

And why would your chances be any better there than they are right now when you've got the ball 40 yards from being able to attempt to field goal to win it. And then they punted and the, the punt was returned for a touchdown. And I thought, man, you guys deserve that. But it was, I was, I was borderline angry at that moment.

And so I don't know. Because they have, remember I talked about this, like for the last two years with the Panthers, they have an artificial, they had an artificially accelerated timeline, because David Tepper realized that you can trade for quarterbacks. And he's like, Well, then why would we just build a roster, we just can't get anybody right.

And he got got ahead of us get out in front of skis. And the Jets sort of did the same thing. And you can get a bunch of jets and New York columnist have written this like, the team's timeline got to where they wanted it to be before Zach Wilson's did. Zach Wilson's no good.

And look, maybe seconds and timeline doesn't exist. Right. Like, I mean, but point being is like, if you're Robert Sala, you can call this season as a success without making the playoffs. Oh, that's that is a good football team. That is missing the quarter because you know what a tie tie is a half a half a win. Right.

But you still had to get through the overtime to tie the game. They didn't even they they actively welcomed the thing that if you're Robert Sala, and you know that what you've got going on is giving you some currency with ownership, and it's boosting your front office and people are talking like if Garrett Wilson sauce Gardner win those awards, there's not gonna be any concern about this Jets front office encouraging staff in this all season, which is huge for them because you have some security I have. I they've obviously done a good job. They have a lot of good players all over both sides of the ball. The Garrett Wilson draft pick was tremendous sauce Gardner.

They nailed both high draft picks in this draft. All right, well, Brinson, you have to go on TV in a little bit. The pick six podcast is going live at the top of the hour. Your hair looks fantastic.

Your so does your beard. And I'll see you and I'll talk to you later. All right. You got it. Will Brinson.