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Not available in all states. This is The Rich Eisen Show. Let's go. The Rich Eisen Show with guest host Tom Pelissero.
Is this real life? You bet. Fender Belts beats Alabama.
From The Rich Eisen Show studio in Los Angeles. And that's going to win it. Castellanos has done it. Lamar bobbles the snaps, stiff arms a man, slings in the back of the end zone. Touchdown. It's a touchdown to Jaylen Palmer. Today's guest NFL network insider Ian Rappaport.
Plus your phone calls, latest news and more. And now sitting in for Rich, it's Tom Pelissero. Welcome to The Rich Eisen List Show. I am Tom Pelissero in for Rich.
He's actually going to join us for like two segments, so it's a mild exaggeration there. Pleased for the first time on a football season Monday to be sitting in this chair with my boys in the studio here. Mike Del Tufo is back. TJ Jefferson here as well. Turn your mic on. TJ.
My bad. Mikey, let me hear it one time, please. You had, you had one shot at that, TJ. You had one shot to come in strong. I mean, you know, it's all right. It was a great game. We had, we had a fun show. All right.
There's a lot to react to around the NFL. I also can make the promise to everybody watching and listening across The Rich Eisen Show radio network, Roku and beyond. This show will come in a shade under 15 hours and 27 minutes, which is the time from kickoff in London.
If it doesn't, TJ, we've all got some problems. I never need a sleeping bag here behind the desk. 15 hours and 27 minutes, according to my buddy Tony at NFL Research, from kickoff in the London game between the Vikings and the Jets to the game last night, ending between the Cowboys and the Steelers. I am never under any circumstances going to complain about bonus football.
We talked about it on the show repeatedly on Friday, right? The extra window, the fourth window, wake up, wake up, football's on. I walked into the NFL network studio at 3 0 1 AM, according to the official timestamp on my Instagram story.
And I was actually back in the hotel gym by six. That part was great. Three game show over. Watch the games. I loved, I love the extent of the football. I could have done without the 90 minute weather delay in the Sunday night game.
That that's a tough one to overcome. I actually had, I went back and watched the full game, the condensed version on NFL plus between the Cowboys and Steelers, just because let's be honest, about hour 13, there were some things that may have been going a little bit in and out at that point from my brain, like your consciousness, you know, we're dozing your, you know, hotel, every hotel, like they got a little bit different setup, but it's always like the, the one chair and the round table that's totally off center from the TV. Right now I figured out I actually had the TV that you could pull out in turn, but that chair for 15 hours, not where you want to be. So flat on my back, you sat in that chair the whole time. I mean, I was like, I was in the chair. I was reclining the chair. I had feet up, feet down. I moved over to the bed. I'm sitting in the bed. And then I'm trying to get the pillows. Right. I got low back pain trying to like, even it out. Eventually. I'm just kind of laying there prone by halftime of that game.
And at some point, yeah, it began to dose a bit. I'm not about you, Chris. I try to avoid those chairs in hotel rooms.
I don't know what's going on in those days. So you would work a 15 hour TV watching day. You, you do that for where the bed you're just sitting. Yeah.
Cross-legged in the bed, you're laying back in the bed. Good point. I was moving around from couch to chair to, you know? Yeah. So I get what you're saying. Your legs start to go numb.
If you sit with the, with the pillows and just like a 90 degree angle position after a while, I actually tried to go, Chris, I tried to go meet Ben Lyons and Venice at a bar in mid day, but there was nowhere to park at the beach. So I just drove around the block four times and then went back home. Yeah. So I made a attempt Tom to, you said you were going to do that. You said you'd text me. You didn't text me. That's why I just turned around and went back home.
I'm like, forget this. So you just didn't watching that game back last night. Like that is a, it was a weird game, weird game, Cowboys Steelers. There's, you know, just a sloppiness element to the entire game. And not because like the field was in bad shape.
It wasn't like a slip and slide out there. It was more so just, there were turnovers. There were a lot of missed opportunities in that game. But listen, first of all, give, give the Cowboys credit here. They are credit their own two in Dallas, but they're three and O on the road, which is not easy to do in the NFL. That's a, that's a good Steelers team.
They had the longer breaks that were coming off the Thursday night game. They had extra preparation time, but to go in there against a good defense and make the plays when they had to Jalen Tolbert, who was banged up and coming back and making that fourth down catch and Dak for throwing the ball to Jalen Tolbert. We've waited three years for Jalen Tolbert to step up and show that he could be a valuable piece of the offense. Well, Brandon cooks out this week. You need Jalen Tolbert from South Alabama, if I'm not mistaken, to step up and make a play.
And he does it. Dak was not perfect in that game, but Dak made the big throws when you needed him to make the big throws. I mean, even think about just even the sequence before the winning touchdown, you're handing the ball off to your fullback or excuse me, you're faking it to the fullback and handing off to Rico Dowdle who gets stripped by a guy going full Superman over the line.
True. Polamalu style is what that was. That was a Polamalu-esque move. That was that, that was that guy who jumped over the judge in Vegas to remember he got that clip, man.
Every time that pops up in the Instagram, you know, the algorithm, that's what that was, which I'm sure is cause like, you know, it like perpetually gives me hockey fights, baseball fights. And then eventually I get to the guy sprinting and diving over to grab the judge and then condoning that. I'm just saying that's what it looked like, though.
It's a perfect play, but you have all these weird things that happened in the course of that game, but they get the ball back and they get a win. I know, and, and watching the, the post-game scene in the locker room and Dak Prescott, who said, by the way, that he went on like a tour of Mike McCarthy's old stomping grounds the day before the game. What does that mean? Mike grew up in Pittsburgh. He's from there.
They went to different places and saw, you know, he went to his parents' house. That's pretty dope, man. Which is, it shows a lot about the relationship here. Mike McCarthy tends to be this pin cushion for everything that goes wrong with the Cowboys, but those two guys have a special relationship and Dak going back to last season when Mike McCarthy took over play calling has performed at the best level of his career. And so to come in to keep swinging in a game like that and to make those plays, I think says something about just, you know, the Cowboys' ability to hold up in the biggest moments. Here's a, here's a little bit of Dak when he was talking about that, that win over the Steelers last night.
It was huge. Obviously it's a guy, y'all know how I feel about him. Love him. Great head coach. Is very, very proud to be from Pittsburgh. Greenfield at that.
And you hear it anytime anything comes up with references from this place. So that's why I had to go on a little tour last night and see some of the, the, the stomping grounds that he's, he's talked about to paint that picture in my head, which was really special and got to stop by his parents' house, spend some time with him and them. And then, yeah, it was just important for us to come out and obviously get this win, another one on the road, go three and two. And, and it meant a lot just to be able to deliver him a game ball, not knowing that was his first. I just kept saying, let's make it, make it one to remember. And I think we did that and all the ups, the downs, the ebbs and flows, a lot of things that Mike preaches on, two minutes. And for us to just stay resilient, win the game in two minutes here in this home, hometown, he deserves it.
Who does that? Who's ever heard of going on a tour with the quarterback the day before the game, but that's, that's Mike McCarthy. He finds the right buttons to push in situations like that. Everyone on that team acutely aware that this game was going to mean a lot to Mike. They didn't play perfect. Again, there were, there were missed opportunities through the course of that game.
They got a field goal blocked. There were, there were a lot of strange moments in that game, but you find a way to go into Pittsburgh, get another win on the road. And in a, a wide open NFC wide open NFL right now, they're the Cowboys sit there three and two, they've won a division game on the road over the giants. They've won three road games so far. You got to find a way to translate that when you head back home next week, they got the lions in Dallas that the magnitude of that game is pretty big. And obviously these are teams that have gone against each other in the playoffs in big moments. They got to buy after that, look at coming out of the, by for the Cowboys at San Francisco, we'll talk more about the 49ers a little later, because that was, that looked like a shell of the 49ers yesterday, other than Brock Purdy, who continues to do everything possible. They finally got a, you go and they got kiddo going.
Deebo was a Phantom in that game. The defense has not been dominant Cardinals can't make a place on, but that's still, that's still the two time or the multi-time NFC champions team. That's always there at the end. Then you got Atlanta after that, a Falcon scene that seems to be headed.
Everything's headed the right direction. You got Philly at home. That's another massive game in the division, even though the Eagles haven't exactly been lights out, then you host the Texans. I mean that, that, that four game stretch throw Washington in there with the way Jayden Daniels is playing too.
That's a big stretch coming off the buy. You beat the Lions. You finally get a win at home. You go to four and two, you're, you're feeling pretty good. As bad as that Saints game was, as disappointing as the Ravens game was, if you're the Cowboys or you're a Cowboys fan over there, TJ, you feel, you feel pretty good, right? You get this win, you beat the Lions, you go to four and two.
How could you not? Yeah. I think yesterday, last night was kind of a early pivot point for the, for the Cowboys. Like you lose that game.
It's two and three. Now you're two games back of Washington who suddenly look, you know, they look amazing. Granted, they're kind of the who have they beaten team so far of 2024.
But Jayden Daniels looks like a clearly offensive rookie of the year, but he's in the mix for MVP and all this. You fall that far behind now. You're reeling a little bit. Detroit comes in off of the buy and maybe they take you to the woodshed a little bit.
Suddenly you're two and four. Now every show is leading with Mike McCarthy hot seat. Belichick's going to come in and save the day mid season. Why did you pay Dak all this money?
Like it really could go south fast. You take care of that game last night. Great comeback win.
Great win of Dak's career. Really. I, you know, I made the argument with Rich on the Overaction Monday podcast, which is available everywhere right now, where you get your podcast. I almost walked through it this morning. Didn't realize the podcast was being recorded before the show. I took, I was two steps away from just walking directly through the camera shot. It would have been great. It would have been great.
You're wearing a great jacket. You got black lights. But I weirdly think this kid kept things on the straight and narrow for Dallas. Now they're feeling themselves a little bit with Detroit coming in.
Maybe they knock them around a bit. Suddenly you're four and two, maybe Washington slips up. And like you said, huge stretch coming up the next four games with the bye week. I think it was a huge win last night.
Can't be understated enough. You still got, you know, you got to figure out your running game because that's been up and down. And again, a big fumble last night to thankfully Dak sees it and dives on it.
It was an instantaneous reaction there. Maybe this is the week Delvin Cook comes up. Maybe it's the week you shake things up a little bit in that backfield. Tom, I want to interrupt, but we can't like overlook the significance of Dak recovering that fumble for years. We've, we've people have gotten on Cam Newton about him not diving on the ball and the Super Bowl, obviously much bigger circumstance, much bigger things at stake at that game. But for Dak to be aware enough and to go and grab that ball, that looked like a guy who's getting paid $60 million a year to put his body on the line.
I'm financially secure. I'm going to get this phone and also he's a competitor to what else? You know, the records, we talked about the length of time and the length of day that becoming the first player to ever throw a touchdown in a pick in two consecutive days of the same game. Like that's never happened before. And all this stuff.
Let's pray it doesn't again. I can go without the 1 AM, the 1 AM finish. All this stuff going on after midnight, you know, it's like all these songs after midnight, we're going to let it all hang out. You know, they were like the tribe called quest, midnight marauders, you know, the midnight express, the, the, you know, the midnight rockers. It was late night and it was great, man.
I don't know. I particularly, I had fun with it. I know you had to get up a little bit earlier.
And for me too, Chris, like, you know, no one who really knows, except for the kids I went to, I grew up with an Altoona in Pittsburgh. For me, a Cowboys-Stealer game is really, really, really special. And it was just like, I was glad we were able to get the win yesterday. What was the stat? Was that their first prime time match up against each other? Since like 90, 20 something years or something like that. It's been a while.
Yeah. Flip side of that, Mike Tomlin, who is, again, they got off to a 3-0 start flying high. They still haven't scored a whole lot of points this season. And Mike Tomlin, as only Mike Tomlin can, was saying this after the game. You know, I just told the team, there's a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes in our business. And you know, that's an example of it. You know, that ball is on the ground right there in the red area.
And that's the difference. What's your mindset about taking the last time out on defense? You know, just trying to win the game, man.
Wanted to gather some information, see the structure that they came out in, get ourselves in the right call. It was a fourth down play. No hesitation about that. We had an opportunity to win that game right there.
Forget what comes after. And so we took a time out. We communicated. We got in a call that we liked. And they won the down. In general, what you're thinking, you know, when it gets under a certain amount of time on the clock, you're much more likely to win the game on defense than you would be no matter how many timeouts you'd save for offense? It was a fourth down play.
The game was right there. I got a lot of questions about that metaphor in particular because wouldn't you, I'm not an expert in the winemaking process, but wouldn't the squashing grapes be like the preparation during the week? And then the drinking wine would be getting the victory on Sunday. So in other words, would the grapes have already been smashed?
No, I don't think so. I think it's a class structure metaphor that he's making. You're drinking wine. You're the elite. You're sitting back with your feet up at the end of a great day. If you're squashing the grapes, that means you're the workers. You're doing all that.
You're grinding out. You don't get to enjoy the wine if you're the ones doing the grape smashing. See, I thought it was like that was, you know, at the end of the game there, you had a chance to pour yourself a nice class and you spilled it, you know, or you sent the sommelier back. You weren't, you weren't happy with the uncorking process.
I have a friend who does things like that all the time. I think it's my brain. I don't think you pronounced the R on sommelier. Sommelier, sorry. Sommelier. Sommelier.
We're in the general vicinity. Chris, I kind of agree with you with your assessment of that. Yeah, I think it was a class thing. The worker, like the grinder.
Yeah, yeah. That's deep. That's far deeper than I was going there. Mike Tomlin's a deep guy.
I mean, I don't even know how to pronounce sommelier. Did you see what he said at halftime? We got to stop kicking our own butts so we can focus on kicking theirs.
I was like, whoa. He's got it. He's got a few all the time and he's going to have some interesting thoughts. I would imagine this week when it comes to the quarterback position because you rewind and we talked about this last week. I have been to the mind the one way or another, we're going to see Russell Wilson, a quarterback this season.
They were winning with Justin Fields. There was never any type of announcement from Mike Tomlin. The only quarterback announcement he has made this season was Russell Wilson is our starter. Russell Wilson is going to be the starting quarterback of the football team. He was in the pole position all off season and the camp, he's the starter and he pops the calf for second day of preparation for the season opener. We haven't seen him since.
They've kept him inactive to avoid any type of storyline regarding, oh, is he going to come in if Justin Fields turns the ball over? But this feels like the point. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm saying, I know it's going to happen. You've lost two games in a row. You're not scoring points. There were a couple of throws in that game last night that Justin Fields probably would like to have back, not terrible throws, but just off enough. You won the turnover battle, what, three to nothing in that game last night?
You had a chance for another one and you lose the game. That to me feels like if you were going to go to Russell Wilson, now would be the logical time. And you can frame it as this is not a quarterback change. This is not Justin Fields being benched. Russ has been ramping up for five weeks.
He's back to full health. We're going with Russell Wilson. And if that doesn't work, you can always go back.
But at some point you're going to need to make a decision. This feels like the lowest leverage time. In other words, you are burning the least amount of capital right now in your locker room with the quarterbacks involved by saying, Hey, Russ is finally healthy. We're going to give them the ball and coming off two straight losses, including one on national TV, where you just didn't do enough offensively to be able to win that game. This feels like the right time.
We'll take a quick break here. Rich is going to join us live from London. He's got, he had the Vikings jets game yesterday.
He's got another one this week and I'm sure he took in all 15 plus hours of the games yesterday. We'll get his takes on all things NFL right after this on the rich eyes and show for business owners like you, the American express business platinum card works just as hard as you do to help you pursue your passions with its world-class business and travel benefits. You can get more for your business wherever it takes you. The Amex business platinum card offers a flexible spending limit that adapts with your business, enabling you to flex and adapt as your business evolves and you'll earn five times membership rewards points on flights and prepaid hotels booked on amextravel.com. So that going that extra mile for your business is even more rewarding. See how the Amex business platinum card gives business owners like you, the tools and rewards to do more of what you love. Not all purchases will be approved.
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Grainger has the right product for you call click Grainger.com or just stop by 15 hours and 27 minutes of football on Sunday slash very, very early Monday morning, all kicked off at Tottenham Hotspur stadium. But the man who joins us right now, rich eyes and on the call for that Vikings jets game. That means if I'm not missing, it's about an eight hour time difference from here. So sir, that ended sometime around 9am. Did you did you take in all all 15 plus hours?
And what are your your general takeaways? Rich from week five Sunday in the I watched everything up until Sunday Night Football. And I even considered staying up for the first quarter of that one. But when it got delayed an hour, I was just hit a wall. So I, I, I saw the highlights, if you will, because again, kickoff of that game was around two in the morning.
So that that one wasn't really going to happen for me. But I saw everything else. And my general sense of week five, it kind of felt like a week five Sunday kind of felt like an extension of college football Saturday, where the matchups on paper didn't feel like they had to be must see, they didn't feel like it was going to be intense, didn't feel like it would be memorable, didn't feel like, you know, unpredictability was lurking, but it sure did. And in the same way that we saw a bunch of top ranked teams in college football get knocked off by unranked teams, we saw a host of unexpected results. I proffer to say the Giants winning in Seattle might be might have been the last straw of anybody who did survive the first month and their survival pool. You know, if anybody was somehow able to navigate the Patriots beating the the the the Bengals and so on and so forth of the first three weeks. It was highly unpredictable.
That's kind of treetops view. But I'll start with, you know, the Vikings who I saw in person. And my general sense of the Vikings is why not them at this point in time?
Why not them? If you think that they're still for Gazi, if you still think that they're they're ready to show that they're not all that despite having seen what you saw in the first four weeks or heard maybe from me in this chair and this microphone and this same setup on Friday, talking about what I heard from Kevin O'Connell and in our pre broadcast production meetings. Just take a look at the standings right now. They are five and oh, they're on their bye week.
Hopefully, whatever caused Aaron Jones to be knocked out of the game on Sunday can be knocked out with a week of rest in their bye week. They'll sit back and watch the Lions take on the Cowboys. And somebody is going to emerge out of that game, either three and two or three and three. And if the Lions are three and two, that means the Vikings have got a two game lead in division on that. And then if the Cowboys are three and three, just take a look at some of these records right now. If you went into the season thinking that the Cowboys or the Eagles were the team to beat in the NFC right now, the Vikings have a two and a two and a half game lead on them.
Three. And you take a look at the 49ers. They've got a right now three and a half game lead on them. Five and oh, and one of those wins was against them. And the Niners are now sitting at two and three. You take a look at the NFC South, who's the world beater there. Three and two, they're two games ahead of them. So you look at what the Vikings have been able to do. They gutted out a win yesterday in which the offense was sputtering, certainly compared to the first four months of the season. And they're five and oh.
There's nothing to be said about that other than you are what you are. And what they are is a well-coached, highly difficult football team to figure out. And one that now knows how to finish games positively. Aaron Jones on that point, my understanding is not expected to be anything long term. They don't need to bring in another running back. We'll see the bye week coming at the right time for him.
It was pretty obvious once he had that ice pack wrapped on there, Rich, that he was not coming back in that game. But two weeks to get ready should be, it sounds like good to go, if not right after the bye. Shortly thereafter, I also, when it comes to the Vikings, Rich, we haven't gotten to the quote unquote soft part of their schedule.
I was asked about this a lot just from living in Minneapolis and doing local radio and whatnot. The hard part of their schedule was these first six, seven games here. And with the state of the Rams at this point being one and four and being pretty banged up, the Lions, yeah, that sets up as a huge game. But you thought going into it, if they could get through those first eight weeks of the season, seven games being four and three, even three and four, they're hanging around because then they face the AFC South. It's the Colts and the Jaguars and the Titans, nothing against any of those teams. But you'd think, you know, those are, those are winnable types of games.
They've, they've set themselves ahead so far. And to your broader point of why not the Vikings, I was struck by this, Rich, just in looking at the overall league standings today, not only do we have only two undefeated teams with the Vikings and the Chiefs, we've only got three, one win teams in the entire league or one loss teams rather in the entire league right now. It's the Lions, it's the commanders and it's the Texans.
Everybody else is somewhere in that three and two, two and three range. There's a handful of teams that are one in four. If you said, who's the dominant team right now, I think you'd probably say it is the Vikings.
Well, you'd have to, since they're the only team currently five and oh, the chiefs may join them tonight. The Washington commanders are another team that is really, really dangerous. They're, they're on a roll. They have won four in a row. They have a quarterback who doesn't turn it over. They have a quarterback who can flip the field and they've got a defense that's believing and they've got a run game that is really stout. They are balanced and they are good and they are the best team in the NFC East.
Sorry, TJ, I'll just throw it out there. It's tough to argue it, but I'm sure Cowboys fans might argue it. They're really, really good and can absolutely win that division.
And who knows after that, they are physical, they are really efficient and they are not, and they are mistake-proof almost. It feels like whenever, you know, Daniels turns it over, it just feels weird, which is wild for a rookie. And, you know, the Bears coming into London off of their best game, this one felt better than the previous game in which Williams threw for 300 yards. This one was on rhythm.
This one involved DJ Moore a couple times. This one has the run game beginning to start really punching it through the line of scrimmage and the end zone. They're coming in with a nice head of steam, taking on a Jaguars team that did finally get on the board.
So there's that. And, you know, in the NFC West, the Seahawks were the shocking loss at home to a Giants team that was out without Malik neighbors. And without Devin Singletary, you got to give it up to them on a big time Stones win in the Pacific Northwest. The 49ers, I mean, there just seems to be something missing and it's not just McCaffrey.
There seems to be a killer instinct that's missing, quite frankly. And when the 49ers begin to have trouble closing games, that's where you're kind of, you know, furrowing your brow and wondering where a loss like the one against the Cardinals at home comes from. I'm not ready to obviously throw this one out yet and throw it on an overreaction Monday pod that Chris and I have already recorded. It's coming out shortly if it already hasn't, because they take on the Seahawks next to kick off week six on Thursday night football. That's a pretty damn huge football game.
And guess what? They win that one. They'll be in first place at three and three. Same thing with the Jets on Monday night football, winning a week six finisher against the Bills. They'd be in first place, which is another reason why I'm also not worried about the Bills as well. And if I may transition to the AFC here, Tom, let me hit this.
The Chiefs, we all know, are the class of the league because they're two-time defending champs. And until they lose, I'm going to keep them atop my power rankings at this point in time. But we'll see. We'll see.
I'll have a couple of days to think about that for Wednesday. But the Texans are for real. I think we can state that. They're not curb stomping too many people, but they're beginning to win games that they're in trouble in and surviving.
I know a lot of folks think the Bills helped them out. If you actually took a look at the end of that game between the Bills and the Texans and took a look at what the Bills did clock management style with about 30 seconds to go inside their own five-yard line and how they threw it three times. The only pushback I would give to their play calling would maybe to run it once. Run it once. You click a couple of seconds off so you know if you're going to throw it two more times. You know if you throw it two more times and your guy, Allen, isn't going to put it in any dangerous spot. You're going to give a shot for Allen just to get out from under his own goal line and get another shot at maybe getting a 60-yard field goal to win it.
You run it one more time. Then you can get to a point where if the Texans get it back, they're not going to have any time to gain any yards except for the fact of kicking a field goal at the end of the game. It wouldn't be too far off the two seconds they had left on the clock if you ran it three times and forced them to call all three timeouts.
You would have just forced Houston into a situation where they would have to throw it to the sideline instead of over the middle to get the game-winning field goal for Fairbairn. I know it brings up the bills are in trouble police or the rabble rousing of the bills are in trouble because they got blown out one game in their bugaboo. This is the team that blew a 12-second advantage for them to actually vanquish the Chiefs at home.
This plays into their clock management issues of the McDermott era, but it wouldn't have been really too far off even if they had ran at three straight times. That said, the Bills are still in first place in the AFC East, one game ahead of a Jets team that's still struggling to find itself on offense and a Dolphins team that is just waiting for Tua to hopefully come back clear-headed. The Ravens have now stepped forward and raised their hands and said, we're kind of the same team if not better because Derrick Henry's jamming it down your throat.
What a game that was. The Bengals can't stop anyone on defense, and that is what's particularly troubling about them right now because Burrow and Chase are clicking. The Ravens just pulled one out.
They got a little bit lucky, but you have to be lucky as well as good. Lamar Jackson is turning it up, and we're not having the same questions we had on opening night or after the first couple weeks of how are they going to work Derrick Henry, and do they have the answer on offense with Derrick Henry in their scheme? That is all asked and answered, and as long as they stay healthy, they're going to have a nice long run in the AFC this year.
That's, I guess, my week five overview with both conferences. My thoughts on the Ravens is with Derrick Henry, there's so many times where the expectation level is set so high on a free agent, and by and large, free agents don't meet that expectation. With Derrick Henry, we're seeing him play like absolute prime Derrick Henry, and all the questions about, okay, they're primarily a pistol shotgun team. How's that going to work for a guy who's used to having a head of steam hitting the line?
The answer is it's worked great. It looks fantastic right now. They still need a botched hold to win that game, but as Joe Burrow said, you know, after afterwards, they're not a championship caliber team right now. The Bengals are not playing consistently at the level that they need to. When it comes down the stretch, I mean, that's a very talented, at least on offense, Bengals team right now that is one and four. They're beat up on defense. They just lost Dax Hill now to a season ending injury. Their defensive tackles have all been out. They've been extremely banged up on that side of the football, but you're right.
They can't get off the field. When it comes to the Bills and that late game situation, I thought that was kind of a microcosm of a trend that we're seeing, which is that teams are being more aggressive in those situations than maybe ever before. We've seen Kevin O'Connell doing it with the Vikings too, where late in games, keep throwing.
That's your best weapon. In their case, it's Sam Darnold throwing to Justin Jefferson. In the Bills case, we got one of the best players on the planet in Josh Allen. Let him try to finish off the game. Now, having said that, you certainly can look and go, maybe you could throw a more high percentage pass. I don't know that running a deep fade one-on-one on the sideline to Keyon Coleman is necessarily the highest percentage type of play that you have.
I don't sit back and say that this is necessarily the wrong approach. It's definitely an aggressive approach, but your best case scenario is if you run the ball three times, unless you break one and get a first down, you're still playing for overtime. They're thinking, we might be able to play for a long field goal and win this game in regulation. But you're right. There's a certain cadre of people who think that the Bills are perpetually teetering on the brink of falling apart.
We haven't seen it yet. They didn't finish that game off. And back to your original point, Rich, with the Texans, they have looked really good. They finished off these games. I was at the one game they didn't win this season. And it's when those Vikings absolutely took it to them. And that was not close.
That was a bad game. That was total domination by the Vikings. So maybe the best case for the Vikings being the dominant team in the league, besides the fact that they're five and O is that they beat one of the other teams that looks really good. And, oh yeah, probably planted some seeds in the back of Jets fans heads early yesterday morning about whether or not they're going to be able to pull out of what they've had going these last couple of weeks with or without, oh, I don't know, a seven time Pro Bowl receiver who potentially could be headed to New York. Well, before we break on the other side of that, I want to talk about the Jets and Vikings game through the prism of Devante Adams. I mean, so far, you know, the running back debate that we had all off season. I'm a table pounder of the first variety, as you know, that running backs deserve to get paid because they're the ones who are always leaned on in a big moment, in a big game to get a first down, to get something done, to balance an offense, to close a game out, to flip a field.
And there's a little bit of something for everyone in the first five weeks. And by that, I mean, you take a look at the top five rushers in the NFL right now, three of them are the three free agents, Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley, who's even in the top five, having a week off and also Josh Jacobs. And the other two are people that you could, you know, say, listen, you don't need to be paying someone very highly to be a difference maker from the spot.
Jordan Mason and Chuba Hubbard are the others in the top five. I'm just going to say it's still too soon to make a case for either one or the other as having won the argument. But right now, ask the Baltimore Ravens, what a difference maker Derrick Henry is making on this team right now and how more one dimensional they might be waiting for Keaton Mitchell to get back healthy with Justice Hill, or maybe Gus Edwards might still be on the team if they had made that decision and how different they would be in digging out of an 0-2 hole right now instead of being 3-2. What about when the Eagles come back with Saquon and obviously, you know, Josh Jacobs helped the fact that the Packers are now 3-2 despite Jordan Love being 0-2. So, prior to now, or now 1-2.
It's just something to keep an eye on right now. And it's fascinating that somebody is going to be 31 as the most dominant guy in the league at the position. And I think that I'm going to be proven correct by the end of the day. I think that even to add on to that too, Rich, you have the reigning MVP of the entire NFL in Lamar Jackson on that roster. And he did some freaky stuff again yesterday, extending plays, almost falling down and still, you know, scrambling and throwing a ball across his body. You could also make a good case that the MVP of the Ravens right now is not even Lamar Jackson.
It is Derrick Henry because of that additional element that he has brought to the table. All right. Let's take, let's take a quick break here.
If I'm not mistaken, Tom, you're referring to the Lamar Jackson play where it looked very unlikely here to throw a touchdown pass, and then it was a very likely touchdown pass. Thanks. I'll be here all week. Glad you got that in. We got that one in, Rich.
More of that type of insight. I'm well rested. I'm well rested. All right.
Let's take a quick break. More around the NFL with rich after this Ian Rapport also join us at the top of the next hour on the rich eyes from show. This season, get premium tech that inspires joy from Dell technologies bring projects to life with the XPS 16. It delivers supercharged processing for enhanced productivity and freedom to express yourself performance class Dell PCs with Intel core ultra processors, deliver a dedicated engine to help accelerate AI enjoy free shipping Dell rewards and expert support.
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So stop by O'Reilly auto parts today, or visit us at OReilly auto.com slash Eisen that's OReilly auto.com slash E I S E N O O O'Reilly auto parts. What's up gents? Rich, what do you got buddy?
It's cracking. What are you doing? I don't know what's going on. What was it?
So can I tell you how much, sorry, no, go ahead. Go ahead. How much joy you brought me yesterday during that game. How's that? You know why you know what you did because, uh, g-reg zerillion added, uh, added an, uh, you had to wait to G one off or made a, made an extra point.
Yes. It took a while for them to get up on the board, but I was just sitting there. I mean, listen, uh, the jets received and then, um, did not get a first down until the second to last drive of the half. So we weren't seeing g-reg, you know what I mean? Um, and I knew, you know, I'd be saying something a lot of people might not understand, but that was for you boys and for our audience that knows for the audience. I got a lot of tweets about the amount of people who have consumed that video.
A lot of people got g-reg what he was up to. That's for all of us. That's for, that's, that's an us thing. Well, the best thing about us is that it's about us. That's true.
It's true. Also, how did you consume the games? It's about us. With the eight hour time difference, how are you watching games yesterday? Uh, as soon as we were done, we went to a conference room here in our hotel that we're all staying at in downtown London and they hooked up, uh, the red zone. So you have never experienced, you have never experienced a, um, a witching hour until you've been in London. So the witching hour would have been like nine o'clock last night, right?
Eight, eight, eight, nine, eight, eight, 30. I think this town is on its second millennium of witching hours. Don't you think this might be the original witching hour? That's how he kept up on it. Witching hour, October boxes and more.
You're welcome. Welcome back to the rich eyes and show Tom Pellicero in for rich, who joins us right now from London fresh off the jets Vikings game yesterday, heading into a bears Jaguars tilt this coming Sunday. Rich, as we bring you back into the conversation, I want to dive a little bit more into the jets, but first I want to play a little bit of what Aaron Rogers had to say after that loss yesterday. I mean, they all hurt. It's gotta be, you know, honest with the performance every single week and hold yourself to a standard.
Um, obviously that was below my standard. I just found out I've never thrown two picks in the first quarter before. So that's the first, um, one of us costs obviously seven and the other, you know, could have cost three. So in a game where you lose by six, you know, plays like that are exponentially highlighted.
So three turnovers for me is definitely a out of character and I'm disappointed. I was thinking last night, rich, because obviously a lot of the conversations surrounding the jets right now also is attached to the idea of a Devante Adams trade, which based upon what we talked about yesterday on the NFL game day kickoff show, other teams involved in this think today or tomorrow, these 24 to 48 hours, this thing may well come to a head and Devante Adams might have a new team. Adams would like to be a New York jet. The jets certainly have a level of interest. The question I was asking myself was would adding Devante Adams fix what ails the jets?
My, um, uh, and let me answer that question for you, um, because that, that is the, the ultimate question, is it not? And what I think ails the jets right now is an offense that is still learning how to operate in Rogers's world. And, you know, while Rogers is learning to operate in a world in which she's 40, and that is, um, occasionally making things tougher where the easier throws aren't connecting.
Um, and in turn it makes it tougher in terms of Rogers recovering from, uh, a beating like he took in Denver and one that he suffered. I honestly thought when he went down, um, right there and we could see on the replay where he was screaming as his leg was caught under, uh, a group of Vikings were all over him all day. I thought he was done.
Uh, I thought he was done for the day, not, you know, running out and, you know, I kind of made a little light of it by saying like Monty Python, he's not dead yet here in, in England. Um, and, um, and then he comes out and, uh, the jets, uh, use a, I think very questionable, uh, roughing the punter penalty. Uh, although Gene Sterritore came on our broadcast and say, anytime that somebody contacts the, uh, plant leg, uh, that that is going to be a penalty and, um, a 15 yarder, as a matter of fact, and the jets utilize that to, to go down the field and make a game of it.
Um, but, but that said, Devonta Adams coming in would be another voice, uh, in the jets receiver room, uh, other than Rogers is to tell them, this is where this offense requires you to be. This is where it requires you to be at a certain time. It's a timing offense. You got to be open at a certain time. Um, and, um, if you think you're not open, don't worry.
I'll throw you open. I'll back shoulder you here. I'll lead you away from the defense there, um, against, um, the, the Broncos, the, um, the, the drive that, uh, the jets were driving to try and win the game. Um, there was a crucial moment where, uh, Rogers threw it and Garrett Wilson's head hadn't been turned yet. Uh, yesterday, the final interception that Stefan Gilmore collected, uh, to make it a trifecta, uh, for the Vikings defense that looked terrific. Once again, um, uh, Mike Williams hadn't turned his head, but Gilmore had.
So those are things that I think Devonta Adams can show the way on. And it's a voice other than Rogers. And then, you know, Rogers is dealing with just knowing that there'll be certain times where he thinks he can sometimes leave the pocket. Can't, uh, stepping up.
Sometimes he can do that. I mean, the number of times Kurt Warner kept saying during the broadcast is arms just fine. That arm looks just, uh, as the Rogers we've always seen before. So putting that all together, I think Devonta Adams can absolutely help on that front. No question about it. And, uh, we asked Rogers about it in our pre broadcast meeting.
And he essentially said that there is a, um, a premium on having somebody who knows, you know, the practice and how to practice and what the schedule is. And, uh, I can tell you this Rogers adores Garrett Wilson. He thinks, I mean, he targeted him 20 times. He caught 12 passes, but the Vikings were just the better team yesterday, man. And, and they were the better team yesterday. And, uh, that was after losing Aaron Jones and their offense became more one-dimensional and Sam Donald didn't have that magic touch where he's throwing touchdowns like Oprah's given away cars. But when it came down to it, he stepped back, he made some great throws, one to Jefferson, one a month is tight end. And, um, and that helped put them up by six and then the defense shut the door.
And that's why I guess we're coming full circle here. They're five and Oh, and they are, they are a, a really hard five and Oh, um, although two of their wins are against AFC teams and that for tiebreaker purposes really doesn't really doesn't help them in the long run. It's more of the NFC teams that they've beaten and they beat the giants who, you know, um, that looks like a more quality win now, doesn't it? And the 49ers who are also two and three. And, uh, we, we could see what they're, what they're, what they did against green Bay at green Bay. I mean, they are, they are already, uh, three and Oh, and conference, uh, and two of the teams that they beat in conference or teams that a lot of people thought could win the super bowl this year. Uh, one of them is the, the golden, uh, victory, which is to win a division game on the road. And then they sit on a bi-week cause, and again, Detroit comes back and, and can have an opportunity, uh, the Vikings to, to vanquish them at home and do the whole skull chant in, uh, in Minnesota, as opposed to in UK, it was a, it was a very impressive win for the Vikings. And I'm not just adding all that because all Vikings fans think that I'm a biased SOB.
Uh, even though I, as you know, I've been, I've been laying that groundwork for weeks on our show. I said, I would give anything for a one score game at the end. And it didn't look like we were going to get that at 17, nothing, but we did at the end. And it was a big time win for the Vikings. And I hope people were, were enjoying the broadcast all the way up to kick off of the one o'clock games. When I was asked myself that question last night, rich about the jets and a Devante Adams tray, where I came down to is this, does it fix everything?
No. But what I saw with Aaron Rogers yesterday, and I've covered him almost his entire career, going back to my days at the Green Bay press, cause that when he's backing up Brett Favre, he threw 10 balls in that game that he was throwing to Devante Adams, that he was throwing to Jordi Nelson, that he was throwing to these guys who he's had this innate nonverbal communication with through his entire career. You're right.
And Kurt's right. The arm looks fine. He could not move in that game, especially after he torqued the ankle. He also probably intellectually knows he shouldn't move a lot at this stage in his career because holding onto the ball is what got him hurt last year because the longer he extend plays, the more shots he's going to take on a 40 year old body. But when it came down to just snapping that ball off and the quick release and firing into tight windows, he was doing it. He threw 10 balls yesterday that were intended for Devante Adams and the current group of Jets receivers caught to the ball in the end zone to Lazard where he threads it. And it is in the exact right spot behind the defender. It's a back shoulder throw of sorts, but to the middle of the field.
And it doesn't connect. He's seen Devante Adams make that play over and over and over again. It is not a quick fix for the New York Jets, but if they're able to bring in that guy. And remember, Rogers has also talked many times about his belief that players at the end of their career can summon something, a will and a want to.
I am certain he spent that flight back from London thinking we can get exactly that out of Devante Adams. You've got another week here, Rich, in London. Get ready for the game.
So take me through. The teams don't get there till later in the week, right? Yeah, the Bears are getting in a little early and the Jaguars getting late because they've got another game on the other side. Just to put a bow on everything you just said, when we talked to Rogers about Adams, I did say to him, hey, it does sound like 17 could help around here. And he looked at me and he says Malachi Corley, because that's who's currently wearing number 17.
It was inactive. I'm like, no, I'm like, no, no. I mean, Adams. And he did say that Adams learned from Jordy Nelson, who learned from Donald Driver, and then there was Greg Jennings before him.
So yeah, that's the point is that Adams can maybe show the way in a way that Rogers is attempting to, but obviously he comes in with a certain bonafide in a wide receiver room that would be valuable, you know, and all of that stuff. But I'm here. I'll be here all week, as I mentioned earlier, and the Bears come into town and we were all jacked up, man, that the Bears won and sort of the Jaguars.
So we got improved records there and then the Giants took one giant leap for Munich Kind in winning that game. So we got that on the on the brain. But thanks for doing the show of all last week and a couple shows this week, brother. Thank you. Always a pleasure, Rich.
Thank you very much. We look forward to catch up with you again soon. You met Lala Kent on Vanderpump Rules. Now, Lala and her friends share everything on Give Them Lala. Baby S is giving me money making moves.
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