The Panther game wasn’t the ONLY game on for MNF

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I've got some other things, but I want to start with running backs. You saw it on Thursday night, or rather Monday night. It felt like a Thursday night for us. For us, it felt like a Thursday night because I didn't feel like the Panthers got Monday night football treatment. It felt like just a game on a Monday night because the big crew was with the Steelers and the Browns, but I'm not going to get petty over that. The Nick Chubb injury brings to me everything that we talked about in the offseason.

I think when you were in studio, we talked about the plight of the running back. Jonathan Taylor, Josh Jacobs, Saquon Barkley, all held out. Then already this year, JK Dobbins, Achilles, Austin Eckler had a great first game, didn't even play in the second game now.

They say there is no timetable for his return. Barkley got hurt in week two, and the Nick Chubb injury was just catastrophic. Not only did it look bad, but it is bad. This has not been a good first two weeks for the running back position.

No, it has it. First of all, I want to say that while it may have felt like a Thursday night for you guys because the Panthers weren't getting the Monday night treatment, I felt like I was watching a Thursday night game because it was so ugly, at least offensively for both sides, really. But the Chubb injury to me is so interesting and it just depends. It's a awful and I feel so bad for him. This is the guy that is at the height of his career and a catastrophic knee injury like this. I mean, you hope that he recovers and that he will be back on the field in a year, year and a half, whatever that may be. But I mean, I don't know that you're ever the same type of running back after a knee injury like that, where I mean, it looks like his kneecap was 90 degrees the wrong direction. And I think this injury, it depends on what side you're on, how you want to look at it. It's it's kind of a test case for both sides of this argument, because on the one hand, if you're a running back, you say, see, this is why I mean, guaranteed money because we're out there doing the dirty work and we can get hurt at any given moment and our lives change. On the other side, if you're the Browns or you're coming from the team and the ownership perspective, you look at what happened in Nick Chubb and you're like, see, this is why we don't pay right back because he has that injury.

He goes out. Jerome Ford comes in. Jerome Ford isn't Nick Chubb, but he still kind of carried the Browns running game. It helps that the Steelers run defense was down cam Hayward. And so they weren't really able to stop anything. But you you're able to kind of plug and play forward and have similar results that, you know, it's not as good as Nick Chubb, but is it a 20 million dollar difference or whatever that number might be?

I don't think so. And so I really feel for both sides. And the other part of this this argument that I think is really interesting is I just had a story on the decline of the deep ball and how offices are now looking for those shorter rates. So they're looking for these more shorter intermediate throws. They're leaning on the game a lot more. They're using backs as receivers. All of the stuff, the game has become a lot more horizontal. Well, you know, you need to make the game horizontal. That's a good running back. So maybe you should pay the running backs more.

But if they're interchangeable, then why would you? And it's just it's going to go around and around and around. And I don't think we're anywhere near the conclusion or a resolution for these two sides. I've actually been talking about this for not just this offseason, but for a while as it as it as teams evolved into using more running back by committee issues. And you see teams year in and year out like I've never heard of that guy. And the Patriots have done this for years where I've never heard of that guy. He just went for 200 yards in a game. They had a guy named Gray like three years ago at 200 yards. And then the next week wasn't even active like. I mean, that's Bill Belichick going next level Bill Belichick. But the position is is I mean, it's fleeting. And I understand I understand why the owners don't want to pay it. I came up with a random solution to this yesterday.

I want to float this by you. Brooke Pryor from ESPN is joining us here on The Adam Gold Show at B.E. Pryor on Twitter. The running backs can no longer be drafted.

If you are a running back, you are you are not even allowed in the NFL draft and then teams can simply sign you out of college. Wait, are you gaming on a Chromebook? Yeah, it's got a high res 120 hertz display, plus this killer RGB keyboard. And I can access thousands of games anytime, anywhere. Stop playing. What? Get out of here. Huh? Yeah, I want you to stop playing and get out of here so I can game on that Chromebook.

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That is interesting. I would love to know, like, is it a league minimum? What's the salary situation? Because I think whatever you can negotiate, see the thing that I think that is going to happen as a byproduct of all this is if you're a guy playing football and you know, when you're younger, you play all over the field. I mean, it's like a team of Travis hunters, except they're not that good when you start doing injury or when you start doing position specialization. If I'm a football player, why would I ever play running back? Right.

Right. Like, if my skill set, if I have a running back skill set, odds are I could probably be a pretty good linebacker. You know, a linebacker gets paid a lot more and has a much longer career. You know, maybe I could be a DB, you know, maybe even a receiver, depending on how you're built.

Like there are so many other positions that I would say, okay, fine. Like I'm, if you're saying I can't get drafted and I can't get the same money as a guy that goes in the first round and teams are open to negotiate with me, if you're saying I'm expendable, if you're not going to give me guaranteed money, I don't want to do this anymore. And so then there becomes a shortage of running backs. And then what do teams do that have now relied on this?

Like, well, it's fine. We're not going to give these guys money because they'll just be another one. What happens with the, when the cupboard is empty, you know, when, when you don't have a restock available I think that, that, that, you know, as much as this as interesting as the non-drafted running backs could be, I don't think that it's viable.

It would be incredibly interesting and would make, you know, at least then we wouldn't have to have the conversation of why would you ever take a running back in the first round? That's a whole, like three days of NFL draft news cycle that we're just throwing out. What are we going to do in June? What are we going to talk about? We're going to have to find other drama. We're going to have to, you know, start dissecting player TikToks and dances and stuff. What are, what are we going to do? Is Aaron Rogers on TikTok?

I'm sure he is. Brooke Pryor from ESPN is joining us here on the Adam Goldschmidt. All right, let me throw a couple of other things out to you because we don't have a lot of, you don't have unlimited time here. Steelers won, but I get the sense that nobody's really happy because as you pointed out, both games on Monday night were, I mean, just horrible. They were both terrible football games. We'll just say there was good defense played.

Maybe that's the best way to do it, but there was also comically bad things that happened that didn't involve injuries. But I know the Steelers are not feeling great about their position based on the offense being so bad. Yeah, it was not great offensively. I mean, their defense outscores them 14 to 12.

The Steelers have scored two offensive touchdowns in two games. And it's one of those chicken or the egg situations where is it the play calling that's not putting Kenny Pickett in a good position or is it Kenny Pickett not being able to read the field well and do more go through his progressions that's causing this offense not to look good. It just, it is, I think the most confusing thing is that this offense looks like it did a year ago, right?

So on the face, all right, well that, that makes sense. It looks like it used to, but then we had this like Mirage in the preseason where, Oh my gosh, is this often going to score a hundred points a game? Uh, probably not, but they were really efficient. They scored five touchdowns on five preseason possession.

No, they weren't always going up against the starters, but like the bills were playing just about everybody in the Steelers were able to move the ball and score against them. So what gives, and it almost feels like Kenny Pickett has some version of the yips where he just like over thinks it or I don't know what's happening, but you know, it's hard to say that watching a guy for a year that something's uncharacteristic because do we even know what his NFL character characteristics are like, but he's been a pretty accurate quarterback for a decent sample size. I mean, last year after the buy, he throws one interception.

I would say that's, that's a good sample size to say he's accurate. Um, same thing in training camp. I think he made you through one or two interceptions in, in team periods. And then he goes out there in the regular season and he is just off target. He's throwing behind guys. It looks like he's tried to throw the ball a hundred miles an hour. He's turned, thrown to triple coverage.

It's like he, it's like he forgot all of the things that made him good. And he has his mind made up. Okay. I have got to get the ball to George Pickens. It does not matter who's on him. I'm going to throw it to him.

And then he just rifles it in there and it gets picked off and it's just, it is so confusing. And so I, I hate, I really hate having to say like, Oh, we'll have to wait and see what happens. But like after two games, I need to see a little bit more to see if picket settles down, especially going against defenses that are not as good as the 49ers and Browns. I mean, these are two incredibly tough tests.

It should get easier, but I need to see a significant jump from week two to week three based on what we've seen so far to feel like this offense has any kind of direction. Brooke Pryor is joining us here. One more thing before I let you go. And I will just say that it's a great strategy to get the ball to George Pickens as often as you can, regardless of who's on him, because I think that guy is an alien.

I think Pickens is just tremendous. But let me ask you about the, I guess it was at the end. It was, well, it definitely was at the end of the Rams 49ers game. Sean McVeigh elected to kick a field goal down 10 with which it was the last play of the game. There were zeros on the clock when the ball hit the net.

So there, the game was over and they lost instead of losing 30 to 20, they lost 30 to 23 and the Rams were getting seven and a half points in Las Vegas. So he has the, it was not, he was not asked after the game. He was asked, I guess Monday and his response was about, I don't know, two and a half minutes of word salad, which really didn't make any sense. But at the end he has the, I don't know, lack of awareness to mention, Hey, they told me that there were people in Vegas pissed off about that. But I have no idea what they're, you know, I had no idea about it going in. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't even mention that because we can't mention that. Sean, what is this? Yeah.

It, you know, his explanation, I read that word salad and I tried to figure out exactly what he was saying. It sounded like he was saying, Oh, we were going to kick out. You know, we went into that drive safety. We're going to kick a field goal. So then we try the onsite attempt to then try to score and win the game at some point before you go out to the field goal, you know, you don't have any time to try the onsite attempt. But yeah, the gambling and Vegas is an elephant in the room of the NFL of the league right now.

And this elephant is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And I I'm, I'll be honest, I am not a fan of sports betting. I'm not a fan of gambling. It's just, it's not, it's probably because I'm not very good at math. And so I would just rather pretend that it's not a thing.

That's why I'm a writer and I am not a mathematician. And so I just don't even open up the door into sports betting. But I think in that position, it looks so fishy that I don't, don't say it, you know, I, I think that it's just, it's awkward all the way around, especially when you've got players that are being investigated and suspended for it. And this is a thing that like, I mean, let's be honest. So regardless of if he mentioned Vegas or not, I think this is something that, that everyone's going to look at and wonder. And so you almost wonder, is it more suspicious if he says Vegas or is it less suspicious if he, if he says it, um, it, it's just weird. And I have to think that there are people asking questions about that and the league office. I don't think this is going to turn into like a Pete Rose, anything wild like that, but it is just like, it's one of those things that just feels icky.

Oh no, there's no question. He would have been better served. Honestly, if we would have said, uh, my neighbor had whoever their kicker is, uh, in, uh, in his, on his fantasy team, if he would have just joked about that, it would have like, like it would have been better, but we all know, we all knew what the spread was. And by the way, there were as many people happy as there were mad because for every winner, there's a loser and the winners, Hey, I had the Rams plus seven and a half. That's awesome.

Uh, especially if you didn't even know the outcome, I couldn't even imagine watching that. Uh, Brooke prior, I thank you so much for your time. You're the best at B E prior on Twitter from ESPN. Uh, I'll talk to you soon. Absolutely. Thanks for having me from I heart podcast. Supreme the battle for row tells the story of the unlikely champions behind the landmark case row V Wade, starring Maya Hawk as 26 year old lead attorney, Sarah Weddington, we're challenging the Texas abortion laws in federal court and Academy award nominee William H Macy as Supreme court justice, Harry Blackman. Time is not the most important factor. Getting it right is listen to the podcast Supreme the battle for row on the I heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.