a top five goaltender in the National Hockey League. Okay, but right now he is playing like a top five goaltender in the NHL. So the decision is not difficult.
It is easy. He remains the number one goalie until further notice. All right, let's get to Will Brinson, pick six podcast moderator, senior NFL writer, CBSSports.com. All right, let's spend the first few minutes. Oh, we got the hat back on.
Very nice. So you must not have a CBS Sports HQ hit. So you don't have to keep your hair all nice and pretty. Let's just talk.
Yeah, I figured out while I was like surfing through my AC antenna channels the other day that I can easily watch this. Like it's like, oh, yeah, there's enough people watching us potentially that I don't want to have my hair every which way. Hey, look, that's fair. Let's let's just speak to Panthers fans for a couple of minutes here. Tell them that they basically have the same chance today to win the division that they had a week ago when we last spoke right last Thursday.
I mean, it's gone down a little bit because time is part of the equation here. And I guess it's the Saints have been brought in to this whole mix because the Saints are also five and nine. And because you have less time here, maybe the Falcons can also win out.
And now we have all sorts of tiebreakers. But ultimately, they win. They win all three. As improbable as that is, it's still there for them, right? Yeah, sure.
Yes, they're probably not. I'm not suggesting that they're going to win all three. But if they somehow did, no, I mean, it's it's like, it's so freaking ridiculous that we have to know that we have to talk about this. But we were just on the podcast, how, you know, you have like, you know, it's late in the year, we're all really tired games and just move past them. Like, you know, normally, you wouldn't have to discuss on a national recap podcast, the what are the records now the six and eight Steelers defeating the five and nine Panthers, like we're just we're gonna move on because most worthless teams in the NFL. They're not even competing for the high draft pick. They're not competing for the division. Oh, wait, the Panthers are somehow still in the mix here.
And yes, they control their own destiny went out. He hosts Dallas in a playoff game. And look, I was actually doing this last night. I think, and this is what we're gonna do a press coverage show. We do like a 15 minute podcast on Mondays, right? For some reason, corporate decided to add in the middle of the season.
We needed another podcast. Yes. I think it's the worst division ever, right?
I can't. I mean, I guess the seven, eight and one NFC South. NFC South. So the candidates I had, and they're all pretty modern, all six 2000, really, the ones that I came up with.
And if you've got if you have better ideas from from from back of the day, I'm certainly open to them. But 2014 NFC South 2010, NFC West, you may recall that the seven and nine Seattle Seahawks, right? I defeated the Saints with the Beast Quake. That division, that division is like is pretty good. It has a negative 322 combined point difference. The entire division with 25 and 39. Wow. Yeah, pretty bad. So currently the the NFC South as it stands right now is a combined 2135 2135 14 games below 500.
Obviously, they have a horrendous point difference. So I believe it's um, minus 135. There you go.
Thank you. Minus 135. So they've got ways to go to actually catch up with that 2010 NFC West or even the 2014 NFC South, which had a negative 227 point differential. But yeah, this is this is up there with the worst divisions of all time. And what I part of me wants, just because it's will be fun is for all four teams to lose again. I want I want this winner to have six wins, right? I want all all four teams to lose again. So we go into next week with the Panthers at five and 10 with a chance to tie for first with a win in Tampa, New Orleans is at Cleveland, Atlanta is at Baltimore.
I think those are probably losses. Detroit is at Carolina the way the Lions are playing and we'll talk about them in a minute. That could be a loss for Carolina. Tampa at Arizona could end up clinching. I don't like clinching the division, but those are two. I want to see what would happen if every single one of these teams loses every single game the rest of the way. Well, I wish that could happen.
I don't have to play each other. There is a possibility, though, that I just ran through the ESPN playoff machine where in week 16, the Ravens beat the Falcons. As you point out, Browns beat the Saints. Totally reasonable Cardinals beat the Bucks.
Why not? I mean, it's a road game. The Bucks just 17 point lead. The Bucks are terrible.
It's awful. Yeah. 17 Cardinals beat the Falcons.
We're asking a lot out of a Tracy McSorley here, but that's OK, right? The Eagles beat the Saints and the Buccaneers in the Panthers tie. And then the Falcons at home beat the Bucks, the Saints at home.
And the six to one Tampa Bay Buccaneers are your division champions. Six ten and one. That would be great. My head is exploding just trying to come up with all those things. Six ten and one would be great. Here's what will get me to this real quick.
And I don't know if you guys have talked about it on the Pics podcast or not. My opinion of and this goes across every sport. Winning the division should get you in.
It should not get you anything beyond in. I value the divisions. Somebody's got to win it. If we don't reward somebody for winning the division, there's no point having them. But it shouldn't make you the four seed. It should it should make you the seven seed if you have the worst record.
At some point, I'll bet I'll bet anything at some point. All the leagues change to do that because all it takes like Dallas, you're talking to somebody who roots for a team in the Atlantic Division of the ACC. So you're not. I understand. Totally understand.
All right. I do agree, though, by the way, like that the division should. I agree with you that the division should matter like it.
These things are cyclical. You know, we talked about the USC West being terrible, USC South being terrible. There have been times when, you know, like if the division is really hard, you have to play those teams twice. You should be rewarded for winning a really difficult division, just like you should be.
You know, it shouldn't matter. If you have divisions, you should be rewarded for winning that. And I'm OK with the four seed. If I'm Dallas, I get why I'd be upset that I'm like going to finish 12 and 12 and 12 and five and whatever. And you come away 12 and five and you're like, I have to go on the road to play a six eleven, six, ten and one Tampa Bay Buccaneers team. Like, great. Right.
Look, you don't have to go back that far. But the Eagles won the NFC East at nine and seven. They were the only team over 500 in that division. So it's not like I mean, every division basically has gone through it. And because it is the entire sport is cyclical. Look, all pro sports are cyclical college sports, too.
Real quick. My one criticism of the Panthers yesterday is that you couldn't run it all day long. You know, they had one carry that exceeded three yards. It was it. Deontay Foreman had a five yard run. That was it. He ended up with, what, 10 carries for nine yards and he had a five yard run.
So we can do the math and the other ones. Right. But they insisted on running the ball when they needed touchdowns. And what it did was it just it put them into a position where the Steelers knew they were going to throw it so they could just use the old football term, pin their ears back and just go right after the quarterback. Now, they might have gotten the quarterback anyway because they, you know, TJ Watt is another on another level.
But I just thought that at some point you can't do what you always do because you're not doing it. That to me was the failure in, I guess, the decision making. Yeah. I mean, they ran for one point three yards per carry. Like, that's just not going to fly at any level of professional or any any level of football.
Honestly, if you're running for one point three yards per carry at the at the I-9 league here in Raleigh, like you need to check. Right. That's bad coaching right there.
Get another father to coach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Fire me and go by somebody's mom at this point. Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I agree completely. I mean, I yeah, I think I think part of the problem with the Panthers is, you know, you have Steve Wilkes has done a great job motivating this team. And I think by all accounts is a is a is a like beloved leader.
I love him. And I think he deserves a second like another shot at being a head coach potentially. Notably with Carolina, I don't think that's going to happen. But, you know, you do wonder, like, is this like, I don't know if the team that he's coaching is necessarily dynamic in its approach to offense or defense. No, no, they they need a better offensive coordinator, they need better offensive personnel. So I don't know if they didn't trust Sam Darnold, or if they just decided at some point, what we do is going to work.
I get it. But they also what I think and I was talking about earlier this week, the lack of a pass catching tight end, the lack of a big target wide receiver really does hurt them. When you get down here, if you can't run the ball. Now, if you can successfully run the ball, as Pittsburgh did, Pittsburgh, panthered, the Panthers is what they did. Those three drives. I that might be the greatest drive in the history of the NFL. 21 plays 1143 91 yards. I don't know if it's better drive than that.
I don't know. I think the somebody went 18 plays for like 42 yards the other day. That was sure.
I like that drive. Like, I mean, you know, we got a lot of crap. I mean, I think you did too. Like, I caught it a lot of crap for pointing out that, you know, when the Panthers traded up for Matt Corral, that and this is not a Matt Corral take.
I think I'm intrigued by Matt Corral. As a player, but when they traded up for him, he was the third. It was the third time. I guess it was the second time Baker's the third time. There's three times they have used non like super high draft picks in acquiring middling quarterbacks.
Right. And people are like, well, that's just a third round pick. Like who cares?
Stop being like, no. Do you know what you can find in the third round? A pass catching tight end or a possible wide receiver like was taken with the last pick of the second round. This is, this is why you don't use these picks. You don't waste them on trying to trade around for quarterbacks. And look, and it's, it's, look where it's gotten them.
I'm a hundred percent on board. So sorry. But it's true. The end of the day spend wasting, not even spending, wasting a future asset on Matt Corral for a lottery ticket. I mean, Hey, you know what? You might scratch off and get sevens all across.
I don't know. Can you do that in a lottery ticket? Um, but you, you might win the lottery. You might win the scratch off, probably not gonna, but you might it's, it's, it's foolish.
It's absolutely foolish. This is easy. We go look for Matt Corral in the 2022 NFL draft. He was taken with a 94th pick, um, notable guys taken after him, by the way, Brian Robinson, he looks great for Washington, young running back.
He's under a cheap team control. Um, it should be come back for the year after he came back from being shot, being shot, right before the season, you're saying 98th overall. And then one Oh six overall, the first pick of the fourth round Tampa Bay takes Kate Otten, who's pretty good with Tom Brady.
Like he would be a valuable asset on this Panthers team that would be helping them right now. Yeah. They, and, and they had serious weaknesses at a lot of positions, which is why I say that the rebuild is not right around the corner.
They are still a few years away. All right. Uh, you and I talked on Thursday about an indication in Jacksonville.
We'll talk about the Jaguars and the Cowboys and the dumbest finish in the history of football next. Your favorite Christmas song is, Oh man. Um, I would be rocking around the Christmas tree fan. I don't really know if I've got a favorite one. Um, okay. That's fair.
You don't have to. I'm a, I'm a big fan of all Christmas music in general, but I think I like, um, some of these like more offbeat, like Christmas albums. Uh, my, my, my, my good friend, Blaine Smith is, uh, is, is very good about, uh, putting together Christmas mixes. Um, I found one that, uh, that, uh, Christmas, uh, album that I actually didn't know about until recently, Jimmy Smith, Christmas cooking. Jimmy Smith, the former wide receiver of the, uh, Jacksonville Jaguars.
Uh, no, he would be based on part of his career. Christmas cooking would have been something different. Uh, actually, you know what, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to take a, uh, I'm going to take a mall again and tell you my favorite Christmas song is, and it's, it's sometimes NSFW Carter back door. It's on my, it's on my top five Christmas song. It's on my top five.
Absolutely. Backdoor Santa's tremendous. Uh, Christmas and Hollis for me is undefeated.
Uh, and as I said, I've, I say this all the time, must be Santa by Bob Dylan. Watch, watch the video. The video will just make you laugh.
It's, it'll, it's a great house party, uh, in the video. All right, let's talk about, uh, the, the Jaguars win over the Cowboys in overtime. There's a lot of games. I do want to get to, we don't have a, I guess a ton of time left. We spent a lot of, probably too much time on the NFC South.
Uh, but I mean, so, you know, right. We talked on Friday, Thursday, rather about as much as anything for Dallas. I mean, they're 10 and four, they're going to make the playoffs.
They're probably going to be the five seed that this was an indication. So did we learn anything? We probably learned more about, uh, Mike McCarthy than we, and maybe Dak Prescott, that we learned about anything about the Dallas Cowboys. How, how did they end up losing the game?
They should have probably put away. Yeah. I mean, now I will say that, um, that, you know, I did point out on Thursday that I thought the Cowboys were going to look ahead past the Philadelphia Eagles. I mean, past this game to the Philadelphia Eagles, right?
Uh, you know, that wasn't necessarily the total case. Cause they were up. I mean, the word knows they were up 27 to 10 in the third quarter. Yeah.
Against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Like you just got to put them away. I mean, for me, it was really more about Trevor Lawrence. Like he's great turning it on and he's looked awesome the last several weeks. I think, uh, anybody who wrote him off, I mean, again, I've said this before you're an idiot.
If you wrote them off, no offense. If you, if you, if you like gave up on Trevor Lawrence after one year with urban Meyer, what do you think? Um, I do, I do wonder the Cowboys for me are a team with a lot of talent and a lot of high level, like stars and scrubs, but I mean, they have like these really fun explosive playmakers on both sides of the ball. And yet there's no way in hell I want to trust them in the playoffs because Mike McCarthy's involved. And this is sort of a reason why, like you're up 27, 10 against the Jaguars and you lose that game in overtime. Now, granted, like the NFL has, the league is basically created is basically, you know, metamorphic, metamorphicize this, you know, the, the way that games are played into a situation where anybody can come back from any like deficit, the freaking Vikings came back from 33, nothing on Saturday. They did that right.
They absolutely did. That Ryan is now given up the largest lead in NFL history, the largest lead in NFC history, and they're going to be the largest lead in NFC championship game history in the largest league in football history. Defense. Poor guy. We're hanging out on Matt Ryan.
That's too bad. But you know what I'm saying? Like it's, it's, you can, anybody can go back from in deficit at this point in the NFL. And I do think that, you know, if, if you had somebody who's not Mike McCarthy, maybe you're going to keep a little, I think Doug Peterson keeps his foot on the gas. It doesn't give up that lead is my point. Look, the, I thought it was an indication going into this game. First of all, I don't get why they would look past Jacksonville to Philly. It ain't like the game really matters that much against Philly other than for their own brains, their own mindset, because they're not catching Philadelphia on top of the division. Anyway, they, they could have, if they beat Jacksonville and Philly lost to one of the games, Philly would have to lose some to somebody else to have a chance. I think, I think it was, I think a lot of it is probably about, um, the, uh, the fact that the, the Eagles look like a dominant team. Jerry Jones is probably referencing how much he would like to defeat the Eagles in the playoffs.
And you heard Micah Parsons talk about it. Like they, they it's, it's sort of like playing them on Christmas Eve, 4 30 PM. Right. All of us heathens who will be watching it. There'll be a lot of people, a lot of, a lot of, not, not a lot of, uh, Christmas Eve services in, in, in, in a greater Dallas area. They'll be very early this year. Right.
Christmas Eve service will be at 9 30 today. And I just think that it, for them, it's like sort of, uh, like, uh, just sort of a, like a test, like a mile marker, right. To say, if they beat the Eagles on Christmas Eve, they can say, we, we know we can beat anybody in the playoffs. Okay. So I, I know this is going to sound weird, but just beat him in the playoffs.
That's the only time you have to beat him. I'm not, I'm not suggesting that this mindset is the correct mindset to have. I'm really suggesting, I think that's where Dallas is. And when you've got, when you've got a division rival, who's better than you clearly on like both sides of the ball and most positions living rent-free in your head, uh, as you headed, like, as you head into January, late Christmas in January, like you're probably in trouble. Yeah. I think they're, I think they're in trouble from, in terms of just how they're playing. They're not playing very well. Dak Prescott is not playing very well. And then therein lies the problem. All right. Two, I mean, I can't even describe how the new England Patriots lost the game other than they didn't really care to win it.
I don't even understand. Now I know the players came out and said, this was on us. This wasn't on the coach. Well, of course, I can't imagine Belichick said, Hey, by the way, if you don't get a touchdown on this running play that we're running at the end of the game for, I don't even know what reason, um, then just throw it around and see what happens. I'm sure he didn't coach that.
Probably not, but I think what did we watch? I think it's, I think we talked about this on the podcast last night, but I think one of the things that is really fascinating to me about the, uh, Bill Belichick Patriots, and I don't want to call it like post Tom Brady world, but, you know, over the last couple of years specifically, I think like the last two years, um, this is a team. So for 20 years, the Patriots under Bill Belichick just simply didn't do stoop. The stupid things that everyone else did that call it like they, they allowed so many teams to lose games by doing stupid things and simply not doing stupid things, letting the stupid things come to them, taking advantage and winning these games. And, and you would see it happen week in a week out all the time in the playoffs. Um, and it feels like the last two years, more or less the Patriots no longer avoid doing the same stupid things that they avoided doing for like two decades. Yeah, it was Belichick that said more games are lost than one.
Correct. And he just proved it. His story, I didn't say he, his team. Go for what's famously said, you've got to win games to not lose them.
National football league. I mean, that's by the way, the play by play call, we're going to play this in wall of sound later. Have you heard Jamie Horowitz play by play call of that? Uh, Jason Horowitz, Jason Horowitz. I don't know why Jamie Horowitz, Jamie Horowitz is the, uh, is your guy, right? No, Jason Horowitz is, isn't Jamie Horowitz like somebody that you've had on your podcast before, like the, uh, like a fantasy football guy? No, that's Jamie Eisenberg. Jamie, Jamie, listen to me, getting all the, uh, the Jewish names mixed up. Hey, I was, uh, anyway, uh, 2012, I'm, I'm an honorary member. Um, Jamie Horowitz is the guy who created, uh, uh, whatever the debate show is on first take. Oh, okay. That's where I get.
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