Jordan Love’s Rise (Hour 2)

CBS Sports Radio in for Zach Gelb. Today I am Bart Winkler.

Good to be with you once again in the Zach Gelb chair from my, well not my, my rented studios essentially in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where people are getting pretty excited. Like I said earlier, it's one thing to go into the playoffs of any sport with expectations where you can't lose. It's another when you've got no expectations, you realize, hey, this is pretty fun where a loss won't destroy me as a person. You still don't want to lose ever, but there's no expectations.

So the pain is not that bad, if even at all. Ryan Wood covers the Green Bay Packers, a fan base going through that right now for the Green Bay Press Gazette and packersnews.com. And Ryan, good to talk to you again, buddy. I want to talk about, well, a lot of things, but specifically Jordan Love. So if you look at the last five games of Jordan Love, he has thrown for 8, 10, 12 touchdowns, no interceptions, the passer ratings never been lower than 109. He's playing very good football. Like it's not just like the stats are good.

Like he's throwing a dump off and the guy's going for 60. He is making these throws and throwing these touchdowns. And then if you want to, you know, take away the Giants game or included in here, it was one touchdown, one pick. You could add three more games back into that with passer ratings over a hundred, still this kind of level of dominance. And when you factor all this in the stats and the big games that like they had to win to get into the playoffs and then a playoff game in Dallas, I don't know that we've seen this kind of stretch really from a Packers quarterback. And I know who the Packers quarterbacks have been, but maybe since 2011, when they were 15 and one, maybe since the Superbowl year, I know Rogers has had MVP seasons, but has he done this in games where the season was on the line?

No, there were a lot of kind of playoff blunders. So I don't know in the last time, Ryan, that we've seen like a stretch like this for many Packers quarterback, three words, just for all Packers fans out there, run the table. You'd have to go back to 2016 when Aaron Rogers ran the table to the U.S. championship game. And that that was Zenith Aaron Rogers. I mean, that was Aaron Rogers at the top of his game.

And if you look at it, that was an eight game stretch between middle of the season. We said, if you like to go and run the table and getting to Atlanta, there was eight games stretched and Aaron Rogers had something like 20, 21 touchdowns, no interceptions. The last nine games for Jordan Love, he's got 21 touchdowns and one interception. So I guess Aaron Rogers has the slight edge there and run the table. But this is Jordan Love in his first season as a starter.

This is this is the first time he's ever done this. And so if you can actually make some kind of comparison between this Jordan Love, who you would think is only going to get better after your first season is usually not your best season. And Zenith Aaron Rogers, that's a good place for him to be. I just think it's so fascinating when you look at the Green Bay Packers specifically and what they wanted to accomplish in this season. And the one question was, is Jordan Love the guy? And there were games at the start where, yes, it looked like he was the guy. And then there were maybe some games where it's like, all right, he's he's the guy. But then like, what do you give him in terms of an extension?

Or, you know, why, why isn't everybody coming along? Like, he is the guy, the amount of money that he's going to make is, I mean, you're starting it at 50, I think. But if he's playing like this, then that's just kind of the going rate for it. It would look like it could happen. But there was, I mean, there's a complete change, like this ascension that he is on, I think was possible. But for it to go from like week seven, eh, maybe it's possible, to week 13, oh, it's here. How did it, how did it get there so quickly?

I wish I had an answer for you because I'm as baffled as anyone. I've watched every game. I've been there the entire time and it turned overnight. I mean, it, you're right. It went from, Brian Gudekins gave a mid-season press conference in which he, he did not say that Jordan Love is the quarterback of the future to, yeah, duh, he's the quarterback of the future.

I mean, beyond all shadow of doubt. So, and this happened in the, in the matter of literally overnight, a couple of weeks. It's just, I remember watching this quarterback in October when it was very much an open question and this Packers offense, it went five straight games this season without scoring a first half touchdown. And it was so bad during that stretch, getting a first down felt like a moral victory for this offense at that time. Getting a first down was a big deal.

Touchdown was like going to the moon. And during that time, I remember, you know, Jordan Love was talented. You could see the talent. So many of the problems were the supporting cast around him, which is the youngest offense in the NFL that he doesn't have a receiver. Who's got more than two years of NFL experience, a ton of rookies. Aaron Jones was injured, missed six games with injuries this season. And that certainly did not help things on the offense.

You could see the, the talent Jordan Love had is just, there's so many issues right now. And the quarterback is almost least among them. So a lot of this is the, the offense has grown up around him and really rapidly matured and developed overnight, kind of like how he's turned his season around. And you, you look at what they just did to Dallas and just put a beat down on them. They're one of the best offenses in the NFL now. It's an entirely different team, an entirely different offense, entirely different quarterback than what they were in October.

You're talking about two different entities completely. I didn't think it would work in terms of like, I thought that Jordan Love and we're talking with Ryan Wood here at Green Bay Press Gazette, packersnews.com covering the Packers, of course. I just thought if you had an experiment, you have to have an experiment where you have no other variables, but the whole Packers offense was variables.

And I thought growing a team together like this is something you do in basketball. It's something you do with your middle infield and in baseball, it's not something you do with football because we saw so many mistakes, guys running into each other, guys running the same route, guys dropping passes, all the receivers though have stepped up. They're healthy at tight end and they're using those two tight end sets.

Aaron Jones has been a wonder and he's finally getting this usage, which he hasn't for five, six years and he's finally getting it. And then you have to take on now the San Francisco 49ers who are going to be a tough test defensively, but the Packers thought that the Dallas Cowboys would be a tough test defensively. I know that sometimes there's these wildcard rounds where you see the performance from CJ Stroud and you see the performance from Jordan Love and everybody gets really high on these guys and then they go in on the road to a team with a bye and the Ravens pick them off a couple of times or the Niners get in there and sack Jordan Love a bunch of times. But if they did it against the Cowboys and they did it against that defense, the Niners offense is going to cause more problems than the Cowboys offense did, but against that Niners defense, is this sustainable the way the Packers offense has been playing? The surprise in that Cowboys win wasn't even the offense because we, at this point it's, we're talking about two months that this offense has been not only getting better, it's really playing at a high level. And over the past two months, Jordan Love has performed as one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. You throw out the first half of the season, you only look at the second half.

That's what he's been. The surprise was the defense. So this, this Packers offense, they can score against anyone. I mean, Aaron Jones ran all over the Chicago Bears defense that came into Lambeth.

I understand Packers fans will tell you the Bears still suck, right? I understand that, but that Chicago Bears defense in the regular season finale had 16 interceptions in its last six games. It was the number, NFL's number one rushing defense, and they might've only put up 17 points in that 17-9 win, but they left about half, about double that on, on the field. They absolutely dominated that game offensively.

Aaron Jones had a big game against the NFL's number one rushing defense. So what, what we saw from the offense in Dallas is not the surprise. The surprise is what this defense was able to do to the Cowboys up 48-16 with 10 minutes left, 27 nothing late in the first half. That's the part that I don't think Packers fans saw coming. This Packers offense can score on anyone. Yeah, the 49ers defense, it's one of the NFL's best defenses, but they've, they've beaten and they, they they've owned good defenses over this stretch they've been on. The question is going to be, can the Packers defense show up the way it has been the last few weeks, but not the way it was when it was given a perfect passer rating to Baker Mayfield in December?

Well, that's the thing. So when you're an NFL fan, I think that most NFL fans can name most NFL coaches and there might be a couple of new ones or teams that you don't follow enough, but for the most part, the average NFL fan knows most NFL coaches. The coordinators, you don't really like know their names unless it's an old coach or like an Eric Bienemy or, you know, Ben Johnson with the Lions is a hot coaching prospect.

You know, Kellen Moore got a lot of TV time. So that's when you start to learn the coordinators or if they're really, really bad and there's no reason they should be employed. And it looked like for a long time that Joe Berry, the Packers defensive coordinator was that guy. And now it's like some Packer fans are saying, well, I don't want to keep winning because then the Packers are going to keep Joe Berry as the defensive coordinator next year. But if the Packers keep winning, like part of that would be something that Joe Berry has done. I know they gave us some points at the end there, but you're right.

With 10 minutes to go, 16 points they gave up. Well, now it's not just C.D. Lamb though, and Dak Prescott. Tony Pollard, I don't think this was the year that they thought he would have, but now it's Kittle and Deebo Samuel and McCaffrey and Brandon Iook and Brock Purdy and their offensive line. And this is going to be like, if the Packers defense, I'm saying this as a Packer fan, if the Packers defense can do what it did against San Francisco, what it did to Dallas, to San Francisco, then like you give Joe Berry as much money as he wants to.

I mean, if they could do it to San Fran, they could do it to anybody. I know that pains you to say that too, Bart. Being a coordinator sometimes in this league is kind of like being an offensive lineman. The only time they know your name is when something done went wrong, right? And you just rather be an obscurity over here on the side.

There's no fires to put out. You're doing your job, not having the official say, you know, 10 yard penalty in your number to a stadium full of people. Every Packers fan knows Joe Berry's name. He's not in obscurity, but gosh, I mean, after that loss that they had to the Bucks a week before Christmas, the question wasn't, or it wasn't if Joe Berry was going to be fired, it was, is he going to be fired by the end of the season or do you just kind of let it play out and then fire him then? It was when, not if.

You got to let it play out. I mean, if they go to San Francisco and just have a meltdown, like the 2019 NFC championship game where the 49ers only had to throw eight passes and everyone in the building knew that they were going to run and the Packers couldn't do anything about it, maybe it'll have a different flavor, a different tenor at the end of the season. But as it is right now, they've turned things around and yeah, what they did in Dallas was very impressive. What they did the week before, I understand Justin Fields is a big question mark in Chicago, but they were able to sack him five times and hold him at 3.4 yards per rush.

That's not easy to do. They've been playing much better. The question is, will that continue or not?

And then there's no crystal ball to figure that out. Ryan Wood, packersnews.com, Green Bay Press Gazette, Bart Winkler and for Zach Gelb. There's been some similarities. If you want to look at the last Super Bowl run the Packers made, they came in as the lowest seed in the NFC. They had a coach in his fifth year. They had a quarterback that had taken over a Super Bowl winning quarterback.

And so there's obviously those parallels. I think though you're seeing a big difference in terms of like what this team is, the fun around the team. This is clearly getting at a Rogers specific kind of question, but I just think like for you, cause I know for me, when I first saw that he's going to the Jets and I had the opportunity to talk to people on a wider scale, I tried to reach Jets fans. I told them whatever free time you think you have in a day, you got to carve some of that out for Rogers, whether you want to or not. Cause you can't just watch Jets football anymore and maybe grab a podcast, read some articles.

You got to be fully invested. He's going to go on McAfee. He's going to set the tone.

People are going to answer for that. Like Wood, you got your Tuesdays free now cause you don't have to watch that anymore. It's just like it, there is a completely different vibe around the team. And I know what Rogers did for the franchise. I know he recently won MVPs, but when these guys talk about how the camaraderie is good and like they're, even if they don't mean to say it, what they're saying is Rogers is gone.

Yeah. I was just thinking, boy, I haven't watched the Pat McAfee show once this season and just how much of a wonderful thing that is just because that, you know, if you're an NFL beat writer, if you're covering an NFL team, Aaron Rogers comes on Tuesday and Tuesday's the one semblance of an off day you might have. So the past few years it's okay. There's one potential off day. What on earth is Aaron Rogers going to say now? You know, what's he going to say this week?

That's going to cause something. Uh, yeah, that hasn't been there. You know, there, this was very different than the summer of 2008 and there were very deep wounds around the Packers in this fan base, this franchise. When Brett Favre went to the New York jets, when Aaron Rogers went to the New York jets, it was very different. It was more, thank you very much for your, your legacy, your four MVPs, your Superbowl trophy. We're ready for something new.

We're ready for what's next. And then that, that was before anyone knew that Jordan Love would be what he was. So it was, you know, it was a much easier landing strip for Jordan Love to kind of take off his career here than what Aaron Rogers had coming in after Brett Favre when it was else.

And it was a lot of, uh, it was very tumultuous in that time. Wasn't that for Jordan Love this year? Well, there's a couple of things I'll always give Rogers credit for. Um, despite the many things I say about him in a negative light, I love that he did not wear number 12 in New York.

I'm a big retired number guy. So I really appreciate that he let Namath, even though Namath said he could, I really liked that. And he handled the Love thing differently. I know he didn't like it.

I know like, you don't, you don't want to see the guy that's going to replace you have a spot, you know, a parking spot as well in your building. But, you know, maybe, maybe he's acting, but I, it does seem like this was a, this was a better relationship surely. And I think that that does, you know, you can attribute some of Jordan Love's comfortness. So he just goes out there and play.

He doesn't have to deal with any of that stuff. And I do credit Rogers for some of that. I don't think there's any question that he handled it differently. I've had people tell me, uh, around the team, just that Jordan never had an ill will, an ill word to say about Aaron Rogers and the treatment that he received, which was not the case early on between Aaron Rogers and Brett Favre.

Uh, but not only that, you watch Jordan Love play, you watch some of the plays he makes, it's pretty apparent. He learned something from Aaron Rogers from those three years of, of developing and observing, um, you know, is the most impressive part of Jordan Love's first season of starter might be the fact that he only threw 11 picks. The guy's never played in the NFL before, uh, first time starting quarterback, you expect him to throw the ball to the other team quite a bit. He only threw four picks inside Lambeau field this season for a guy to come in and take care of the football. Who's the best to ever do that. Aaron Rogers, nobody's ever taken care of maximize big plays while minimizing turnovers and giveaways better than him. Uh, there's some things that Jordan Love certainly learned from Aaron Rogers. And that's a testament to Aaron Rogers being willing to, to, to kind of not, you know, give that cold shoulder that he might've gotten from Brett Favre. Ryan Wood, Green Bay Press Gazette.

He's online. That's what I say now at buy ryanwoodpackersnews.com. Thank you is always good to catch up, man. Enjoy the weekend. And I know that, you know, the off season's always nice, but I hope it doesn't come for you for a while. Fair enough.

Take care, bud. Ryan Wood joining us here again, Green Bay Press Gazette and packersnews.com and covering the Packers won a lot of awards for doing it for a long time. So it's always good on a personal level to catch up with him and also get some good insight on the team heading into the, uh, Santa Clara this weekend. And Jordan Love is playing like the best quarterback in the NFC. He's playing like it right now.

Is he? We'll take a look at the QB rankings in each division. Um, conference, I should say on what, like if they were gonna, like if this is a, a four on four match on one side, you have Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love. On the other, you have CJ Stroud, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes.

It's weighted a little bit. So we'll look at them from both conferences. I'm Bart Winkler and for Zach Gelb, CBS Sports Radio. CBS Sports Radio. I am Bart Winkler. Great to be with you. 855-212-4227 is the number to call every chance that I can be on the radio.

I will take, I love my family. Um, but right now the, the house, it's got a lot of trolls. We're watching a lot of trolls. That song reminded me of trolls. It was a movie that came out eight years ago and for some reason it's all the rage. We just went through a sing phase. Um, what did we go through before that?

Frozen? Well, we're just, it's just a lot of the same thing every day. I'm trying to lean, like, let's go Ninja Turtles here.

Let's go like, you know, uh, we get some Spidey in there, but oh man. And then not only do you watch the shows, but then you get in the car and then you have to listen to the soundtrack of those shows. It's, it's quite the, it's quite the experience. So I'm going to savor every minute of listening to my own voice and yours instead. Thank you for that.

855-212-4227, 855-212-4CBS. You know, I think it is interesting as we get down to the playoffs and where we're at right now in the NFL and look at the different quarterbacks that are there, you know, ranking the quarterbacks and I am going to rank, we're doing a rank today. I'm doing a ranking. I'm doing a playoff pressure meter. So I'm not going to do two rankings in one show.

I could, but I'm not going to today. But, uh, top of next hour playoff pressure meter. The teams that have to win and, uh, the teams that are just kind of enjoying the ride. And I think really there's one team who has already changed where they are in that meter. They went from like first to last.

So I want to talk about all that and how it's going to affect some of these games this weekend. I think that with the quarterbacks, I want to rank them so bad, but again, I'm doing another ranking. The thing where I start to look at these quarterbacks now is the teams that have them, who would they trade them for?

That's my thing. Who would they trade them for? And before the season, I'd come up with a bunch that I don't think they'd trade them for anybody else.

I had put Trevor Lawrence and Jalen Hurts in that list. I don't know if they're still in that list, but when you look at the quarterbacks that are left, every team's going to have an affinity for their quarterback. Every team's going to be happy with their quarterback. Like Jared Goff being in Detroit, kind of being an underdog, being a part of this team. They don't want, you're part of the identity of that team now.

Okay. Same with Baker Mayfield. Baker Mayfield, that toughness, that grit, you know, he's basically playing hurt. He gets sacked every play that he gets sacked. He's limping off the field. I guess Kyle Trask is coming in.

Now Baker just threw another touchdown. So some of these quarterbacks, they end up making up the identity of the team. So for this specific couple of weeks here, I'm sure every team would say, no, we want to keep our own guy. But I do think there's some teams that if you're going to play it out and go to the rest of the future, there's some teams that would trade for some of the other guys. I think the AFC is pretty set. I think if you're the Bills, you're not trading Josh Allen for any other quarterback in the league.

Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes still left, but you're not trading him for anybody else. That run that he had was the great example why. Josh Allen has been as much of a part of this turnaround for Buffalo as anything else.

It's been amazing to see. And you know, I thought it was going to be the James Cook show. Once they beat Dallas or James Cook at a bunch of yards, I thought, all right, that's finally going to be how Buffalo wins some of these games. They don't win as they have a rushing attack that's not Josh Allen now, but that single play where it looked like he was going to have a first down even fooled Jim Nance and Tony Romo because they just thought he's going to have a first down to go down and he just kept running. I mean, I know that Josh Allen gets compared to Big Ben a lot, but I don't, that's not, this isn't Big Ben. This is more Cam Newton than Big Ben. Big Ben ever ever run like that?

I'm not sure. I really don't think so, but Josh Allen does. And he is, I know he can throw some turnovers, but that's what you're going to get out of him. I think that Josh Allen is a guy that Buffalo would not trade for any of these other quarterbacks left. So they've got their guy. The Chiefs obviously are with Patrick Mahomes. He's their ride or die.

He's done so well for them. They're finally going to play a road playoff game. This is so intriguing. And the weather in Buffalo is getting nasty again. There's going to be a bunch of snow. I saw somebody with the take or a tweet or, or whatever about how Buffalo actually is.

If there's any stadium that Buffalo that should have a dome, it should be Buffalo, but we've never realized that before because they've never made the playoffs like this so frequently because the snow storms they get in Buffalo, man, the snow storms they get in Buffalo. It's like the snow storms. If you're in an area where I think most areas are like this, you know how when schools canceled and there's only like five inches of snow. If you're in like the Northern part of the state, the country, I know there's some Southern parts of the country today where there's like one inch of snow. So you cancel, but you don't have the equipment. You don't have the infrastructure to deal with it. Like cities that are used to it for half the year do.

So that's fine. But when you're a parent, it's like eight inches of snow. We canceled for, we didn't cancel. There were 30 inches of snow. Well, that barely happened. We did cancel for eight inches of snow back then. It's the same kind of thing. Buffalo now gets the snow storms we think we got as kids that we remember getting and they get them constantly and they're getting them again.

And it looks like it'll be, it's coming now. They don't know if they're going to be able to go back to practice tomorrow, what they're going to do, but the weekend should be fine. So there shouldn't be any issue with the game, but Buffalo repeatedly gets these kinds of snow storms being in the Northeast, being off the lake.

And it's just wild what happens there. But Josh Allen, the guy, Patrick Mahomes, road game, the guy, I don't think they're trading him for anybody. Lamar Jackson, the guy. I don't think like if the chiefs called the Ravens and said, Mahomes for Lamar, I don't, I don't think they would even call for that. And I don't think the Ravens would either. All these teams are keeping their quarterback Texans, the same Texans are keeping CJ Stroud. Texans are keeping CJ Stroud. Now you could convince a GM, all right, Lamar can get like, if, but they're not trading them. The Texans are keeping CJ Stroud. If you're going to rank the quarterbacks in the AFC right now, Stroud's probably four because he's a rookie and he's got less on tape, but none of these guys are trading for anybody else, not in the future. And certainly not this weekend in the NFC.

I do think it's a different story in the NFC right now, the Packers aren't trading Jordan Love for anybody else in the NFC, certainly. If they could have Mahomes, if they could maybe have Josh, I know the 49ers would do it. If you're the 49ers, and this is what's so interesting about Brock Purdy. And this is a huge moment for him.

This is a huge moment for him. Brock Purdy still has question marks around him, even though everybody in San Francisco is going to tell you, he's like so great and very good. And that Dallas game on Sunday Night Football, I was kind of skeptical. And then I'm like, oh, okay, Brock Purdy can make these throws. My take on Dallas right now, or on San Francisco right now, rather, and I have this take as a guy who doesn't follow the Niners day to day, like people around the Bay Area, because the people around the Bay Area that I've seen, they would say, no, they're not trading Brock Purdy for anybody. And it's like, either they're thinking, either the Goggles are way too strong, or he's better than we're all seeing.

And we haven't seen that yet. I think if the Packers got a phone call from the Niners that said, hey, before the weekend, let's swap quarterbacks, the Packers would laugh at the phone call. And I think the Niners, if they got the phone call, they would put the phone down, look around and say, yeah, we'll do it.

I think they would rather have Jordan Love than Brock Purdy. Now, I am someone who covers the Niners, or the Packers rather. So I do think maybe I have the Goggles. So if I could go to you guys here, because a lot of what I'm trying to be more cognizant of is, Sam, when I'm talking, I don't just try to talk to fill a segment like I did when I was younger.

I try to talk and listen to what I'm saying and see how it's received. The Niners and the Packers, Jordan Love's better than Purdy, right? Or am I crazy? I would like to think so, but it could also be recency bias. If you asked me six weeks ago, I would have said, are you crazy? No, it's Purdy.

So I want to see a little bit more of both of them. So I'm not ready to make that definitive statement. But what we've seen lately from Jordan Love, it seems like he might be the real deal. I saw this stat that I think he finished with just over 4,100 yards and 30 something touchdowns. And the only quarterbacks who finished their first full season as a starter with more touchdowns and passing yards than him were Patrick Mahomes and Kurt Warner. So he's in pretty good company for his first year as a starter. And what we've seen lately, he's just getting better and better every week, especially with a very young and inexperienced receiving core. I will say, though, that Brock Purdy, he has so much talent around him. But as a seventh round pick, the next Tom Brady type of feel, now I'm not saying seven championships, just like this guy who came out of nowhere to take over a team.

So I don't know yet. But right now, sure, I'll go Jordan Love. But like, give me a year or two, give me six more weeks into next year, I might flip that entire statement. Because what I'm thinking is what I've said about Brock Purdy is I think Brock Purdy is good. I think he's good. I saw that Sunday night game. I was like, Okay, I think he's good. It didn't go so well against the Ravens. But Brock Purdy is good.

You have to you can't be bad. And you like you can't you can't he's good. He's good. But could Jared Goff have had that season with the Niners? Could Jordan Love have had that season with the Niners?

I still think the answer to that is yes. I still think that he's good. But there's other quarterbacks that have couldn't could have gone in and had that season with the 49ers and Niners are trying to say like, Oh, Jordan loves playing within the system. And, you know, maybe they're taking shots at Aaron Rogers. Maybe they're just saying Jordan loves the system quarterback. And I know that the system quarterback phrase is such a dirty word now. When you still have to be good to run the system. It's not like we're plucking anybody from the stands and saying, go run a two minute drive, you have to be good.

I just still don't know. I don't know if we're I don't even know if we're able to like that Prescott got a lot of criticism, but the offense around Dak. It's CD lamb. It's Jake Ferguson when people are playing 15 yards off. Tony Pollard's been nothing for them.

He's been very disappointing. The other receivers are give and take. I mean, I think that Dak Prescott has the Cowboys are good because of Dak Prescott. I think the Niners were good because the overall cohesiveness of the team was good. Baker Mayfield's great.

I think the Bucks trade him for anybody. And I think that Jared Goff, it was a big win for him, but I think the Lions might sniff around on some of those other guys playing Saturday night as well. 855-212-4227, 855-212-4CBS. More on the NFL, the playoffs coming up this weekend of course. Let's get an update from Rich Ackerman.

CBS Sports Radio. I am Bart Winkler in for Zach Gelb today. Call your friends. Call your family. Call all your people. Call your cousin you haven't talked to since, well, it's been a few Christmases now.

After grandma passed, we don't really get together the way we used to, right? Call your fourth grade teacher. Call whoever. Let them know that in 15 minutes, we are doing the playoff pressure meter.

That's right. Who's got the most pressure in the playoffs this weekend? So sometime in the next 15 minutes, I need to make that list, but I do know that we will go through the list and I will be prepared.

I will have that for you. Who's got the most pressure to win? Because what I'm realizing as a fan and what I've known, but it's fun to experience it, is the playoffs are a hell of a lot more fun when a loss doesn't guarantee a straight depression. It's a lot funner to be in the position of, hey, we can lose and then be optimistic for next year and be proud of this year because not everybody wins every year, but sometimes your team, you get to a point where you got to win.

You got to win. Otherwise what a waste of time and what's next for the franchise. I think the Eagles were kind of in that spot, although they got to a point where they were so bad at the end of the year that the pressure started to win, like it just went away.

They were so bad that there was barely any pressure. Fletcher Cox was at his locker today and said this about Nick Sirianni. He said, what is there to talk about? This man is a winner. He's a winner head coach. We had some bumps this year, yes, but every team goes through it, but we don't look at firing a man who has won 10 plus games two years in a row, made the playoffs three years in a row, have some respect. He's a good leader for his team and he does a really good job. So some of the Eagles players today were speaking and were speaking positively about Nick Sirianni, which I think is fine. I think you might get, I don't know that it does anything for the player to come out and say, man, Sirianni sucks. Man, we lost that game because of Sirianni. Man, I'm surprised he hasn't been fired yet.

I was going to park in his spot today to do this, but surprisingly he was here. Like it doesn't benefit the player to say that either. And I, you know, actions are louder than words. So the words are great.

The words are great. The actions, just the way that that team from the start never looked like they had any life. You got to wonder what's up with Sirianni. So I honestly thought that we would have some news on this by now. I thought we'd have some news on McCarthy by now.

I thought we'd have more concrete news on Jim Harbaugh by now. And this is one of those situations where, you know, like with baseball, a lot of the free agents didn't sign and really some still haven't signed because they were waiting on Shohei Ohtani for the first domino to fall. Well, there's so many first dominoes right now. Like what needs to fall first?

What needs to fall first? Are some of these coaches waiting to see if some of these jobs open up? Are some of these teams waiting to see if these coaches go somewhere else? Is Belichick waiting on Harbaugh? Is Harbaugh waiting on Carroll? Is Carroll waiting on Vrabel? Are the teams like, what's going on here? When's the first domino going to fall?

So it's pretty interesting the kind of situation that we're in right now in terms of why there seems, I mean, I don't know, I know we're in a 24 hour society, microwave kind of society, but it does seem like there'd be more news to report at this time. And we'll see what happens. Specifically with some of these NFC East teams, two of them that lost this weekend that could be moving on from their coach. A team that did not want to move on from their coach was Alabama. And they are, they're having a rough day after Nick Saban stepped down. So today alone, and they've got their new coach, Kalen DeBoer, and he's assembling a staff that people are pretty excited about. He's bringing in head coaches from other places. Just today, SEC freshman of the year and star safety Caleb Downs is expected to enter the portal. He's entering the portal. So that's happening.

Their starting left tackle, Kaden Proctor, also intends to go into the portal. And they had a five star Zion Grady who decommitted. That was today.

All right. Since losing the Rose Bowl, they've obviously seen Nick Saban retire. They saw 21 players now, at least 21 players enter the transfer portal. And they saw six recruits from the class of 24-25 already decommit. Saban's announcement has shaken up not only his program, but Washington's, Arizona State, San Jose State, South Alabama, Buffalo, as there's all this movement with coaches filling in these gaps, going up the ladder, so to speak, but also joining Kalen DeBoer's staff. So it's been a real ripple effect after Nick Saban. And that's one of the things I wondered about Alabama when Nick Saban stepped down, is without the premier coach, and I mean this with all due respect, which I say when I'm going to say something that might insult somebody, is Alabama a prestigious program or are they only a prestigious program when they have an all time coach?

That's what I wonder. Wallace Wade back in the 20s, he won three titles. Frank Thomas won a couple. These guys are regarded as great coaches back in their day. Bear Bryant, obviously, who some Alabama fans will still say is better than Nick Saban.

They won in 92 with Gene Stallings. I remember, though, Alabama, so I'm about 40 almost. The Alabama that I know was never great. I mean, maybe they were like an Ole Miss, like Ole Miss. Ole Miss is Lane Kiven.

What do they do? They win nine, 10 games, make a nice bowl game. They're not competing for national championships. That's what they were at their best.

Some years they were even worse than that. I mean, Mike Shula came in and some of those seasons have been vacated, but these are six, seven win teams. It wasn't until Nick Saban came where he really changed the program around and there's a bunch of infrastructure that he had built along with that. So I wonder, is Alabama, like Ohio State, right? They're a prestigious program, we think.

Yeah. Is Alabama one of those programs or are they one of those programs when they have the good coach or do they attract the good coaches because it's Alabama? I remember when Tom Crean left, it wasn't Marquette to go to Indiana.

They said, why are you leaving? And he said, it's Indiana. I have to coach in this place. It is one of the premier destinations and programs in college football. And I just wonder the same way we talk about the success, is it made by the quarterback? Is it made by the coach? How much is made by the quarterback? How much is made by the coach?

Is it like that in this sport? How much is made by the coach? How much is made by the program?

So that's an interesting thing to wonder with Alabama. I also saw they reported, well, they reported the number the other day about the peacock, the peacock ratings, 23 million people watched and yes, more people would have watched it on NBC, but that's a lot of people watching for a lot of people that said they wouldn't. And I still, I'm very, I am protective of the streaming service because it saves me money as a WWE fan. I used to pay 50 bucks for pay-per-views. Now I basically just pay 50 bucks for the year. So it saves me money.

So I am protective of it. There's another number reported from the weekend, and that is the number 15. And that 15 people were sent to the hospital for attending that game.

There were a lot of phone calls, but actually 15 people then had to go to the hospital after that game. Look, I don't know if I'm a little more bougie in my old age. I like a good seat when I go to a game now, unless it's like a real big event, I'm not going to be like a just get me in kind of guy. And I'll go in the cold. If it's 15 degrees, 20 degrees, you know, you can bundle up. Once you get in the negatives and that Buffalo game, maybe for the experience, but it should not, it should not be like, you should not maybe go to the hospital. If that's a possibility of going to a game, don't go to a game. My playoff pressure meter is next.