Why the Packers Might Be Misleading Us About Jordan Love's Injury

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important feature limitations and [Music] information ladies and gentlemen welcome once again to the packernet podcast I am your host and Resident panelist as always right and schlip check us out online packernet.com find me on Twitter pacor well I want to start today with the uh Jordan love update of which there isn't one but I was uh thinking about it and I feel like there's a very obvious thing sitting right out there in front of me that I just didn't pick up on until it just dawned on me yesterday so I I've mentioned that it constantly seems to be more and more and more and more and more and more and more positive right like Yay everything's great Jordan's going to be back in um you know turns out it's not the worst case it's 3 to six well that's good and it sounds like it's going to be on the on the more positive side so it's three and Packers are even like it might not even be three and it's like dang this is crazy and the problem we we made or the mistake we made many of us myself included is that we just believed them look let let's put it this way let's say it is a grade two sprain like they say it is grade two is 3 to six and I believe when they say that they're going to be cautious with him which means if they're 97% sure he's ready he's probably not going to play so how do we make that make sense well think about the tough spot the Packers are in it's not impossible that putting him on IR is the wrong decision because if you put him on IR that's four weeks what if he is ready in 3 weeks he probably won't be four five six in that range very possible but what if he is you only get so many designated to return IR slots they've already used some of them they don't want to use it on a guy that could pot you know somebody that is critically important that could potentially be back in 3 weeks even if it's only like a 10% 20% chance so you've got a hurt quarterback you're thinking he's going to be back let's say in let's say we're planning on 6 weeks we don't want to put him on IR though what do you do well what you do is you start saying we feel really really really optimistic and we think he's going to be back in fact Malik Willis will be the starting quarterback assuming Jordan love doesn't get cleared starting throwing some doubt out there why because of your opponent this is what they do every single time this is why by the way the 49ers absolutely lied when they said it was a game time decision and they got caught doing it so if you didn't see this and I I I barely saw it apparently and I think this was in the post game um the running back who had a good day everybody wants to talk to him and he's all excited he's not really thinking and he says he found out on Friday he was going to be the starter well the 49ers said that they didn't decide until game time which is why everybody my son and the guy that I was playing in fantasy football got completely screwed because they didn't have time to change out Christian mcaffry I was playing him twice in my two leagues I still lost one of them um so they had Christian mcaffry with zero points it was a game time decision but it wasn't why because they wanted to lie it's an advantage to make somebody game plan for a person who's not going to be there if you at least have to dedicate a little bit of time to the possibility Jordan's going to be back now granted I'm guessing the Colts are smart enough to say he ain't coming back this week we're willing to risk it we are not game planning at all but they're going to try they're going to say he's looking good we'll see how it goes he's a maybe things are really looking positive and we'll see I bring this up not and I'm not I'm not 100% it's not impossible but I bring this up because what this is doing although it's strategic and it's it's a chance to give the Packers an edge and I don't blame the Packers for doing it it's going to lead to massive amounts of frustration among Packer fans and then you're going to hear things about for example the training staff and why are they doing this and all this kind of stuff right um this is now my frame of reference if it turns out he's back week one freaking crazy great I guess it wasn't you know they were first first of all apparently wrong about their diagnosis it was not a grade 2 sprain you don't come back from a grade 2 sprain in a week um but I I'm I'm I'm fairly confident that that's essentially what's happening because again it makes sense if it was a grade one sprain then he could be back this week if it was a Grade Three sprain he would have been put on IR it's a grade two sprain which the range is possibly IR he could be back before IR most likely he would have been back after in other words it's probably the best idea to put him on IR but we don't want to use up another spot and it's you know if he's ready week three he has to be out there so we're not going to do it so then at that point again it becomes what do we do about this and I think the strategy is we just remain overly optimistic we say he's way ahead of schedule we pump that out to Ian Rapaport we'll we'll see he might even be back before 3 weeks you got Matt lefur saying hey we haven't ruled him out this week nothing's official yet we need to wait and see how he's doing he's doing really well in his in his rehab he's walking fine he doesn't need a brace any of that stuff um you know we we got to do a followup but we're feeling really optimistic about it as of right now we're we're rolling with Malik but um we're we're not doing anything officially yet until Jordan's you know but but again I I'm guessing they are 100% positive he's not going to go they're just not going to say it so the rest of the team knows or although if if the coaching staff is smart they're telling the rest of the team the same lies they're telling us otherwise you put them on the that's what the 49ers did wrong is they went and told the guy on Friday well now you're making him him responsible for lying for you and he's the one that's going to get in trouble by everybody for telling the truth because he was supposed to lie and he didn't lie and now he's the bad guy you're putting him in a really crappy situation so if you're going to lie as a team lie to your whole team you can lie to Jordan too I mean again it's it's ugly but don't put players in a position where they have to lie for you you know what I mean um they probably will anyways I don't know I bottom line is it's just it's a thought that I had that makes a lot of sense it it it makes significantly more sense than it is a grade two Sprain and he might be back in a week which is not really a thing that happens well these are NFL players and they have the best medicine and I understand but I I again I I'd have to obviously I'm I'm not a doctor I don't know this stuff but if if we're talking about potentially a partial tear and trying to get everything back to 100% I I just don't know that you're going to get this thing to just heal I mean it's it's partially just a biology thing it's not about how how many you know leg lifts you can do on a machine or something or with the rubber bands I don't know that that's going to help heal a torn thing I mean that's a thing that naturally occurs and there's going to be like a scar there and it needs time to heal and strengthen um I don't know I don't know um not trying to ruin everybody's day and I don't think anyone really expects him back this week but I just um I'll leave that possib you know what is that uh think the worst hope for the best or whatever that's kind of where I'm at and I I I'll be honest I do kind of want to put you in that frame of mind because I know what the alternative is I would rather have everybody if he plays this week reach out to me and say see you were wrong you freaking idiot but he played this week then the alternative which is continue letting everybody feel optimistic and then get super pissed when he doesn't come back until five six weeks later um which you know we'll just we'll just go with a three to six and hope it's on the early end of that but I'm I'm really not going to believe any amount of overly positive news from the Green Bay Packers it's really just going to be week to week and they're going to say week to week they're not going to you know and that's the thing we're going to be finding out very very last minute on Jordan love every single week as as as late as they think they can push it and get away with it I don't know what all is involved in that and and you know whatever but I think they're going to be doing that every week which means giving the fans hope every single week and then crushing their dreams and then it's just going to be massively increased frustration you get what I'm saying um so I'm going to let go of that I'm going to uh Embrace Malik we're going to forget everything I ever said about him when he was in college or with the Tennessee Titans he is now a great elite football player that's going to help us win football games that's that's what's going to happen so um speaking of great football players or not great football players by the way actually a couple things I mentioned you know when you look into the stats there are some things that could be extremely positive that maybe PFF is not super positive about I've got a few more actually and one of the things that you can do to feel better about your team's performance is look at the Eagles and what they did before we get fully into that though I want to bring up an interesting little thing that I noticed there's been a lot of talk about and it's weird that it gets highlighted like a lot of players didn't give up any sacks in week one like a lot including several Green Bay Packers players didn't give up any sacks they're not getting praised all over the Internet for some reason Lane Johnson is being praised for giving up zero sacks in in the games sorry I pushed the button there I'm back to my old recording thing I'm so sick of using everything else that doesn't work I'm trying to just get better at realizing that there's a lag and and working around it hopefully it sounds okay um so CBS put this on social media I saw other people retweeting it or whatever and I didn't really think too much about it um and then other people were saying they were showing a clip of rashan Gary running around Lane Johnson and saying well what about this and I thought yeah certainly look looks like it they probably just put it on the running back cuz saquon was in the back field and he just stepped up but the more you watch it you realize that's absolutely not the case um the Lane Johnson first of all for whatever reason was sleeping on the line of scen everybody moved including the defense Lane's just sitting there for what felt like a full second it probably wasn't quite that long but in the NFL you know even a half a second you're you're dead for whatever reason he was daydreaming he didn't move when everybody else moved ran was able to just get right around him and get to the quarterback you could also tell by the way that he really was you know if he was just trying to get a hand on him or whatever just to help chip so that you you know then you know the running back's going to pick it up there's a certain way that you do that and then get back he tried as hard as he could to get around there and he couldn't and then the way he kind of like tried to find work on the other guy that wasn't his responsibility while his head the entire time is watching the guy run right to the quarterback knowing that was his bad and then the body posture that was 100% on Lane Johnson there's no debating that like he just knew as soon as that thing got off he's like oh crap I just gave up a sack he knew that um but I thought all right well let's see what PFF said because CBS said he didn't give up any so I want to see what uh what what the deal was with PFF so I looked and sure enough they said that Lane Johnson gave up no sacks and I thought okay well they must have mistakenly put it on the running back you know what's hilarious I'm looking at their blocking page which you know shows everybody offensive line tight ends running backs everybody guess how many cumulative sacks they give up in this game zero they didn't credit anybody with a sack in the entire game the only amount of leeway here and I have been trying to find it I don't know where the heck it is um it's in here somewhere but um there is a uh where the heck is it here it is I found it maybe this is the answer uh let's see is Philadelphia in here Cleveland yep they blamed Jaylen Herz for that sack I was thinking about the only other option is that they blame Jaylen Herz and they have a page under quarterbacks if you look under position under quarterbacks allowed pressures and it shows what percentage of their sacks and pressures and whatnot came under different responsibilities so quarterback offensive line and then they go through left tackle left guard Center Right Guard right tackle it which is the tight end on the end line or other which would presumably be a running back they put under the one column of quarterback own pressure allowed they put one sack one hurry to two total pressures on Jaylen Herz that is psychotic in what universe is an unblocked pass rusher getting to the the quarterback in probably in fact I can tell you exactly how long it took cuz I think uh NFL accounts for it well this says 4 seconds that must be taking into account something else time to sack 3.9 that's not possible I'll get my hold on I'm going get my stopwatch out and we're going to do this officially wait a minute did they delete the post NFL on CBS deleted their post about Lane Johnson giving up zero sacks because Packer fans lit them up all right well I don't know if I'm going to be able to find the uh find the clip of him give me one more second here I've got it at exactly 2.5 seconds I found the clip started it when I saw the guy's move I stopped it as soon as he touched the quarterback not how long it took for him to get dragged to the ground even though that was like 0.1 second it's pretty instantaneous but as soon as he touched him I pushed stop 2.50 is what I got they're saying this is Jaylen hertz's fault but if you think that's like well yeah PFF sucks which I'm I'm going to get into that in a second um I decided to go over to sis guess how many sacks sis says Lane Johnson gave up zero what are we doing here boys what are we doing and I can't check sis for uh whether the quarterback or running back gave it up because they don't they don't go into that stuff and NFL Pro doesn't uh have any offensive line stats so that's all I've got I know that PFF blamed the quarterback and I know sis did not blame Lane Johnson 2.5 seconds right around Lane Johnson bro this is the easy stuff man this is the easy crap this is really annoying to me since we're bringing that i' I've been kind of alluding to this for a while but haven't uh found a good time to lean into it might as well do it now US Cellular has no Noti the way we use our phones has gotten ironic we try to put our phones down for dinner but the menu is on a QR code that's ironic we hit like on social posts that we don't actually like which is ironic which is why US Cellular created us mode to help us reconnect with each other and use our phones less ironically a phone company wanting people to use their phones less is ironic let's find us again with us mode from US Cellular visit uscellular.com SLB built for us to get started hey it's Kaye quo for Price Line ready to go to your happy place for a happy price well why didn't you say so just download The Price Line app right now and save up to 60% on hotels so whether it's cousin Kevin's kazoo concert in Kansas City go Kevin or Becky's Bachelorette bash in Bermuda you never have to miss a trip ever again so download The Price Line app today your savings are waiting toy price go to your happy price price line there was a uh article written by Arif Hassan he has got his own uh substack or at least he contributes to one I'm not sure it's called WID left. foot um if you're interested in checking that out I'm kind of curious about it right now yeah this is just AR Arif Hassan wide left football um but the title of the article is what is happening to PFF says Sam Monson and Steve palazolo have announced the departures from Pro Football Focus the company they've been the face of for years is the foundational football data company in trouble I talked about this before because you know when that happened that was a big deal Sam Monson Steve palazolo some of the biggest uh PFF guys you always see them everywhere and they are leaving so this is the part that really bothers me because again I I I've been a proponent of PFF since the early days I remember when um PFF was a very different website like you kind of had all the data like it was pretty expensive but you got everything there was one subscription you could get and um it wasn't quite as clean and comprehensive as it is now but it was pretty cool it was a cool thing I remember using it for for like bedding data and whatnot it was pretty cool they showed uh like the plus and minus for each player and all that kind of stuff it was it was interesting stuff um things are are certainly changing and not for the good part of it we we've talked about before one of the things that we've mentioned is the fact that you know there's a big different I mean there's kind of different uh categories alog together right um some a lot of people just hate PFF as a broad category some people look at it and say pff's data their stats are good their grades are garbage I think that's probably even a maybe the largest group I kind of look at it as three different camps you've got the media side the grade side and the data side uh data being stat say statistical side I do think that the grades are tied into statistics but I I believe that they are uh separate entities alog together um the media side to me has always been a joke and I feel like the media side has made the data side look stupid because they say a lot of stupid stuff that even their own data doesn't agree with which first of all the contradictory nature of it makes your company look stupid right if you guys don't even believe in your own data why should anybody else if you're not using your own data why would anybody else even if people don't necessarily know that there's a contradiction CU they don't use it they just see you saying stupid stuff and they're like see this is why PFF is stupid if I go look at it and say your data say something else I can't even defend you I can't even defend you because not only did you say something stupid but if I point out that PFF doesn't even believe that how does that defend you so the media side has always been stupid social media and the videos they put out and everything else um even though guys like pal they actually do a really good job they say some insightful stuff if you ever watch their show they're some of the few media people that actually do have a deep understanding of of a lot of teams in their players they can speak fluently about a lot of different teams and players you listen to some of the other media guys they have no idea they don't know anything about the Packers or anything else um it's kind of embarrassing as hard as it is to know 32 teams in their rosters and their coaching staffs and everything else uh that is your job and if you can't do it and then you pretend to speak about it that's not great but anyways that's sort of the the backdrop of this at least for me I like the backend side the stat collecting for sure the grades I know are not perfect I know there's a lot of flaws but it's really nice because it's the only place you can go where you can get a snapshot of all players across the league and you maybe allow for a little bit of Grace or build in some some buffer in your own head of these things aren't perfect but generally the high graded guys are the good guys the low-g graded guys are the bad guys and there's been data to suggest to to suggest and show all this that there is correlation between certain stats and whatnot in PFF and PFF is um maybe not the best tool but there's you know like uh oh I hate even bringing it up because I'm going to say it I'm going to say it wrong and somebody's going to tell me that it's wrong ELO L ELO whatever the heck it's called um I think is also a thing that is used that is quite High probably better than uh um PFF but PFF is good it's not as though there's no correlation it's a relatively High correlation but there are problems with PFF and those problems are continually getting worse in other words the product today that maybe isn't great is probably significantly worse than it was several years ago when it was better let me read through a couple of these bullet points it's an unbelievably long article so rather than go spend the entire day going through all of it I do want to go through some of these charts and whatnot later but of course I just had my friend the robot um kind of summarize this so let's go through it real quick number one tff has experienced significant turnover losing many key employees the company is divided into two main parts the consumer facing side and the businesso business side they do work with bigger businesses obviously they work with the NFL they work with individual teams uh all that kind of stuff Silver Lake invested $50 million for a 31.25% stake of PFF valuing the company at $160 million the investment pushed PFF to focus more on the growth and Broad appeal potentially at the expense of their core analytics and strengths and a lot of people at having read the article I know a lot of people at the company really really hate this they really hate that they're being pushed away from their core which was the data Gathering that's what's this company started as it was a data company that that you know collected massive amounts of of data and and graded everybody and and did a lot of really good stuff and now they're being pushed more and more into a media company George chirari hold on charar yeah I guess that's right George chirari former director of consumer products was fired due to toxic management practices but allegedly still consults for the company so this was actually a big story in the article so this George guy apparently was horrific I'm talking terrible horrible borderline evil human being charging up and down the Halls just you know treating people terribly well apparently for whatever reason I forget who who it is um one of the main guys over there I think he's one of the guys on TV what the heck is his name I don't know the guy that invested in PFF real early he's now like the owner part owner major owner whatever obsessed with this trara sees him as like a business Guru so he doesn't want to let him go so really he was quote unquote fired but really all they did was kind of move him away from other people but he's still directing or is largely in control of the direction of PFF says there's tension between maintaining pff's reputation for deep analytics and appealing to a broader audience the company changed its grading system to be more like Madden ratings which some view as less informative again I I mentioned a long time ago they used to have more of the plus minus things you would see Kenny Clark had a you know minus 1.5 this guy had a plus 2.5 whatever and then they changed it to Madden grades pff's B2B side which provides detailed stats and video to NFL teams has been more profitable but may face increasing competition the company's culture has suffered with reports of poor management and questionable decision-making despite challenges PFF still has talented individuals and potential for growth particularly in fantasy sports and draft coverage the departure of Monson and palazolo marks the end of an era for PFF leaving the company at a Crossroads one of the things they really delve into is that whole server L thing which you know we talked about this with NFL teams and there is some risk of this being a thing too the there's some studies and they they put this little study in here declining in quality when private Equity gets involved so when a private Equity company comes in and as I said buys 31.5% they talked about you know this is most felt in healthcare where they come in they start cutting everybody's pay the the the fraud things go up like every everything's awful and so they they show you like the decline decline in quality um right after these private Equity firms come in pointing to the fact that that's probably happening at pff2 potentially going to happen in NFL teams to hopefully not but you know of course well they don't have any voting power it doesn't freaking matter they have an equity stake they own part of the company they expect a return and they're going to be down your throat 24/7 pushing you to make more money and by the way if you don't they're going to exit and you're not going to have anybody else buy back in even talks about you know the the fact of dumbing it down as CER notes tapping into the market of millions of football consumers would require broadening pff's appeal moving beyond the football nuts to the average Sunday Night Football viewer which the NFL has done this at a large scale which I don't like um if you're a hardcore football fan it's going to be less appealing to you like you get football and there are ways to nerd out on football but everything is pushing toward a broad audience which I understand right it's it's the appealing to the most amount of people um but man even NFL entertainment and everything else is so just dumbed down and stupid all the time but they bring up a good point if PFF is trying to dumb down their information why would somebody pay a high level price for a um PFF subscription they phrase it as why would someone cruising for surface level information pay for PFF you can't both be a surface level we're just kind of playing it cool no big deal company and also you have to pay a ton of money for this hardcore data there's a paragraph right here that points out exactly what I've been saying for years the social media platform ter from turned from one that leaned into PFF strengths as a company that can provide calculated even cold evaluation of players using their access to uh minutia to a platform that tweeted out highlights speculation memes and unalloyed engagement bait says it didn't start with private Equity but Silver Lake accelerated it PFF is this is who I was thinking of PFF has battled with the question ever since Collinsworth bought it Collinsworth is the guy I was thinking of he bought it and I think he's the one that really wants um that psychopath to run things um they talk about you know why the old grading system was significantly better they called it the JJ Watt problem which he says would go on to be the Aaron donnal problem in that it really doesn't do justice to the massive difference between elite players and not elite players and they show the side by side uh differences they they have the old grading system um which had raw PFF grades uh back in 2013 JJ Watts grade was a 111.6 the next highest was Gerald McCoy 57.3 and then at the bottom you had a negative - 28.5 so it really did a good job of actually showing how good but then when you get the um the Madden grades now JJ Watt had a 93.2 the next highest Gerald McCoy 84.5 now there's still like a gap but it's a very minor Gap and the lowest is a 34 8 so it's a everybody's kind of high it's a really gradual grade down it doesn't give you the real picture and because they're so stupid at business just listen to this there have been Rumblings among those familiar with the B2B operations that their public presence including a Twitter account that's tweeted out brand damaging nonsense clickbait inhibited some of their efforts then they show an example where it says Joe Flaco coming for the qb1 job or whatever the the bottom line is why would a professional football team pay for some hardcore analytic data from a company that's so stupid their their brand is being damaged by their attempts to be like this cool hip trendy like we say cool crazy wild stuff it's admittedly difficult to convince a football team to buy data from a company whose public presence doesn't seem to stand football wide left has confirmed that the impact this has impacted their relationship with teams so you got people on the B2B side trying to sell a pretty solid product and they can't do it because teams look at PFF and and teams have responded to it but they largely respond to the other side of it saying these guys are idiots given that the B2B has been more profitable uh the more profitable Side by a good margin it would be an odd priority if it wasn't for this pressure from Silver Lake to tap into the unlimited consumer market so these people are saying there's too much money to not be going out and trying to get it so they're pushing and then you're actually hurting the business that's actually profitable said it's not good enough to be profitable they need to be more profitable than they were last year and the year before that and so on the Mandate for growth has undermine the product while the management has driven out the talent to produce good good content even their B2B team has been gutted palazolo was a big part of their early B2B push with Drummond who was critical to creating a product that teams actually wanted to use their chief engineer Jeff Lane was an enormous component to keep their back end running so was Ian uh perks the first ever employee of PFF had uh that they brought on they're all gone people who worked in both worlds content and B2B are also gone as is their pipeline of talent in that Arena eager Eric eager was considered one of the most prominent public facing data scientists in football and they couldn't hold on to them eager had many times received off offered offers from teams or other organizations offer often for more money than what PFF could provide he ultimately left not because suers Sports later the Carolina Panthers offered a better compensation package which they did but because eager felt manipulated by the company and could no longer trust those at the top according to caller's book how insane to have one of the most brilliant data mines working for you even though you're paying less Because he believes in your mission he's getting offers from NFL football teams offering to pay way more money and he's saying no because he's loyal to your company and he's proud of what they what they've built and finally he left not because it was more money because but because he feels like he's being manipulated by people who bought into a product and ruined it I mean it pisses me off because I'm also a consumer and a believer in PFF I'm excited about it just like I was excited about sis when they came on board and still am and I think they're going to continue to grow just like I love NFL pro and all these other things and I think the competition is good the fact that a lot of people are popping up because at the end of the day if PFF can't get their crap together they're going to go out of business and they should they should I've been a big proponent of PFF for a long time but if they continue down this path because they're being driven by morons then they should go out of business and companies like you know NFL uh Pro and SAS and Sumer Sports and all these guys they should take over they should take over the space maybe it is time for PFF to die if you can't even tell me who gave up a sack on a play where the the the right tackle didn't move in time and he whiffed on even touching ran Gary who sacked the quarterback after 2.5 seconds you don't know who did it you're going to blame that on Jaylen Herz what are we freaking doing here and again a lot of companies are coming in and they're they're hungry and there's a lot there's a lot that is not being touched by PFF and they're going to have better uh reputations um let's uh this little paragraph here but we're increasingly seeing companies enter the space that are entirely independent of PFF that teams are interested in including Sumer Sports who Eric eager left PFF for stats bomb has entered the market with AI accelerated player tracking and a history of strong performance in the European soccer analytics Department that's the other thing we got so much technology now like PFF started with like this hand counting stuff which is great you got dozens and dozens of people who are like recording things by hand that's crazy and that's cool but guess what there's a lot of stuff but like sis I remember way back in the day they have like software where they're tracking all this stuff it's why they wanted you to be inh house I think somewhere out in Ohio like Cleveland or something um at the time now it's not that way necessarily but like you had to be there they would train you on their techn and technology is booming I I I appreciate PFF man they've done a lot for this program but they have got to step it up it's going to be far too easy for people to just step in and replace them you know uh especially with you know again all the the technology and the AI and you know if they're still doing pen to paper you know Excel spreadsheets doing all this stuff which I appreciate to some extent um you know I mean look there's there's a lot of people stepping it up and pretty jacked about it but it's going to be uh sad if PFF kind of just Falls by the wayside um because I'm you know they they were the innovators they were kind of the first ones to to really get in and do it at a massive scale and then give it to us to to be I mean it just it radically transformed my ability to understand football and I really really really appreciate them for that but this is upsetting um anyways now that I've just spent that time unleashing on PFF we're going to take a break and come back and uh look at PFF I look I I stand by what I said it's still going to be a tool that's better than what Twitter is which is I watched the game and I saw two cool plays and I know that they were good and therefore I know PFF is wrong like no that ain't going to cut it for me um but you know it's just this year we'll we'll be sure to add in all these other tools and be able to hopefully be able to you know fill in some of the blanks create a fuller picture and plus it'll give you the opportunity to ignore what you want to ignore and take in what you want to take in and form your own opinions which I've always said you know I'm going to give you the information not going to try to tell you I I mean I'm going to strongly tell you what I think but you feel free to form your own opinions um but yeah we'll take a break probably going to have to be our second break I ranted for quite a while I'll just slide one in somewhere um and then come back and look at some of the things about the Eagles that'll make us feel hopefully a little better about uh our performance we'll take a break we'll be right back so I was I was interested to see this you know I pointed out some of the stats that were pretty good obviously a lot of it's got to get cleaned up because at the end of the day what matters is the score um but again you look at their well I mean we'll we'll just go through more than I thought the big thing that really shocked me when I I looked at the Eagles statistics and I the only reason I was even digging is because I was trying to figure out who gave up the sack so I'm just digging around trying to find it and I was shocked to find this um Jaylen Herz very good quarterback if you look at let's just go back to well his overall grade so far I mean rookie year he didn't play a ton so we don't have to worry about it year two he takes over 77 grade not bad next year 88 next year 87 like he has just hung in that range 2022 and 2023 he's been solid his lowest grade and I think I mentioned this before with Jaylen and some of the other guys I think CJ St too they don't quite have the ceiling that love does they don't have as many like 90 games but they're real consistent so his lowest graded game last year was a 53.4 against the Giants right that was that was way at the end of of the Season 2022 his lowest graded game was a 49.8 again against the Giants now remember these are division Rivals so you almost even want to discard that a little bit but you know we we'll call it what it is and then um his first year as a starter the wild card game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was his worst it was a 45.3 grade so that's his lowest grade ever 45.3 it was in his first year it was a playoff game against a scary Tampa Bay Buccaneers team do you know what his grade was against the Packers defense Jaylen herz's grade was a 29.8 it was by far the worst game Jaylen Herz has ever played in his entire life now you know we could chalk it up to field condition or whatever the case may be but holy crap I mean first of all Jaylen remember they did a fantastic job of containing him he didn't run anywhere and then as a passer 34 attempts um for 278 yards 8.2 yards per attempt two touchdowns two interceptions he had two BigTime throws which is 5.6% four turnover worthy plays shame on the Packers defense for not capitalizing on that by the way nearly 10% one in 10 of his passes was potentially picked off um so yeah NFL passer rating of 80.3 isn't great but they gave him a 33.3 passing grade and a 41.2 rushing grade and a 30 4.4 fumble grade absolutely terrible the other interesting thing he had a 73 grade when he was kept clean but a 20.6 PFF grade when he was under pressure so he was terrible while Under Pressure but here's the good thing guess how often he was under pressure 41% of the time that's a lot folks there's been a lot of talk about there was no pressure on Jaylen Herz bull crap 41% is high that's really high the Packers defense brought pressure a ton so out of his 39 dropbacks 16 of them he was under pressure 13 attempts four completions for 49 yards and a pick zero Big Time throws three turnover worthy plays this is a disruptive defense now again Jaylen did a fantastic job of getting the ball out quick in Rhythm on time you know you bring extra guys and the guy gets home and in 1.2 seconds he gets the ball out to a guy that's really impressive and that's you know you can get mad at the defense all you want that's one of those things where you go that's just not supposed to happen you know and I think that's why they started to back off a little bit because it just despite being successful in terms of getting to the quarterback quickly he was able to manage that but um and again when there was no pressure he did a good job 73 PFF grad 72 passing grade uh 62 rushing grades 76 fumble grades OB you didn't fumble in that play or whatever but um yeah he he was terrible under pressure and he was under pressure all day long and everybody doing Victory Laps on saquin Barkley I mean 109 yards two touchdowns is pretty impressive they gave him a 57 rushing grade I'm just saying now yeah he had a big day but how much of that is Elite saquin Barkley compared to oh I don't know Kenny Clark slipped face planted and it was a giant hole for him to run through and 4.5 yards per attempt is not the greatest thing in the world as a team 3.8 yards per attempt that's it that's all they had and I also mentioned how bad our defense looked their defense looks pretty similar I really think week one plus field conditions um especially defensive line CU they're in the same actually you know what I'm wrong well nobody had a good day for defensive tackles they had four players I think we had like two or I think two two or three they have four players that had good grades Darius Slay 71 Bond 76 Brandon Graham 77 and then safety Reed blankin ship had a 90 PFF grade then they had 1 2 3 four more players that were in the 60s and they were low 60s and then it's all 59 and below so out of their 19 players 11 of them were below a 60 um you had eight of them that were low 50s or lower so Jordan Davis uh Tal Ed defensive tackle 53 with a 22 tackling grade chony Gardner Johnson 51 with a 38 run defense grade 27 tackling grade Nolan Smith had a 50.7 linebacker defensive tackle Thomas Booker 49 outside linebacker Bryce Huff 47 that's the guy they went out and paid a bunch of money for to be a pass rusher 47 PFF grade zero pressures by the way zero um Avante Maddox Corner 44 Jaylen Carter one of the best defensive tackles in all of football had a 30 PFF grade and ncoe Dean the linebacker that came in to replace uh whoever was that got hurt 29 PFF grade Jaylen Carter is starting off the season with a 30 PFF grade just saying it was it was and it was all run defense right and and again everybody struggled with that so part of this is be happy in some of the things that happened um they were a lot of positives and a lot of negatives caused by the Green Bay Packers there's also a a sense of just look around the league at how much people struggled not everybody right the the Chiefs look Beyond scary they didn't seem to have any issues week one but there were a lot of lot of people that you would expect to be better that were really not exactly tearing it up right so if you look at the top quarterbacks a lot of things are kind of in the order that you would expect some of them you expect some some correction so Sam darnold being number two that's going to get worked out right um Baker is number six Anthony Richardson is number eight uh largely because of rushing Justin Fields is 10th which I I pray that he just gets better and better please let him keep playing please let him get better oh and by the way dude Justin Fields 77 passing grade 63 rushian Gade he did it he did it through the air go Justin let's go 17 attempts 73 .9% completion rate 156 passing no picks three big time throws no turnover worthy plays let's go Justin let's go big dog dang but anyways then you get uh after Justin Fields Kyler Murray 11 Trevor Lawrence 12 Josh Allen 13 CJ stoud 14 Lamar Jackson 15 Jordan lovees 16 Joe burrow 17 like that pile right there those are guys that got off to a little bit of a rough start they're GNA pick it up right Dak Prescott right now was one of the best quarterbacks in football he was 21st Herbert 22nd just above Daniel Jones who is above Matthew Stafford uh Jared gof 28th I don't know what he did to piss off PFF but holy cow I thought he was doing a good job based on what had happened or whatever but um 217 one touchdown one pick zero touchdowns two turnover worthy plays Jared G is one of the low Jaylen Herz by the way lowest great quarterback in football right now after what the Packers did to him just saying below Bryce young which is impossible um but again Kurt Cousins 29th don't think that'll stay that way Jared gof 28th uh Caleb 26th hope that stays that way and gets worse so a lot of weird stuff it's week one a lot of goofiness lot of people on new teams like cousins lot of weirdness weird feel in weird countries no offense I don't mean weird Brazil you know what I mean a foreign as in unusual um super dope country that puts flame on meat and changed my life dude I want to make a Paka again so bad you guys got to come over man I'm going to have everybody from the podcast over and we're going to make a bunch of panas and I'm going to because I just I don't want to feel crazy I want you to eat it and be like tell me I'm not crazy right now that that's amazing anyways I'm sorry lot of stuff to get worked out by the way on the positive side if freaking Sam darnold can be the best quarterback in football why can't we have the best quarterback inot you know what you know what it is Vikings fans wi this into existence they kept saying what if what if Sam darnold is not just remember I read you that article what if he's not just good what if he's Elite and I laughed at him and now I look like an idiot we just got to will it into existence bro I think that's all stupid but Aaron Rogers says it works so it must do something Malik Willis will be not just good lady and gentlemen he's going to be great let's let's let's start it right now this is what we're going to do the rest of the show Malik Willis hype train starts today start with my boy over at Walter Football as a passer Willis has some impressive arm Talent he can really spin the ball and shows no problems pushing the ball vertically down the field the football jumps out of his hand and he has easy arm strength to Rifle passes with just a flick of the wrist on top of the arm strength Willis shows nice ability to Loft in touch passes downfield he can put air under the ball and drop it in some big armed quarterbacks become so dependent on their arm strength that they throw flat passes but Willis has avoided this trap displaying touch pass ability to go along with being able to fire fast balls was serious velocity Willis has a quick release and can make plays off script in fact some team sources said that a lot of Willis's best tape came from when things would break down and he could scramble and throw deep down the field with his arm strength and touch pass ability Willis demonstrates impressive deep ball accuracy in 2020 don't worry about the year his arm Talent has a lot of NFL evaluators and coaches very intrigued to go along with his big arm Willis is a true dual threat quarterback is a dangerous Runner he has the quickness to Dart up field and good speed for a signal caller letting him accelerate further while running away from Defenders with his athletic scrambling ability and Big Arm will is is dangerous at ad libing and can create big plays on rollouts making plays off script in backyard football is an envogue trait in the NFL and Willis showed a similar ability with Liberty as a runner Willis is tough and will lower his shoulder and run through contact he will uh he will to need to cut down on that however to avoid injury at the next level just saying dude this guy's going to be good oh by the way player comparison Jaylen Herz Willis has some limitations as a passer in terms of seeing the field don't even worry about it uh blah blah blah both have good dual threat skill set of Mobility to go with arm talent in the NFL Willis could end up being a quarterback similar to Herz some team sources have also compared him to Tyrod Taylor I think Herz is certainly more accurate no offense to trod but you know by the way 40 time 442 44240 time NFL draft buzz says Willis possesses the best athletic ability of any quarterback prospect in this year's class without a doubt he's strong has a powerful running style is super fast and Elusive with probably the strongest arm in the class don't need to read the rest that's all you need to know goes on to say he will likely be selected in the mid to late first round of 2022 now I said that that was nonsense and it ended up being nonsense but still that was the consensus view funny enough uh there's an article here by Matt Waldman who does fantastic work I me you would talk about in-depth stuff um he did a quarterback Malik Willis scouting profile um comparison Spectrum Lamar Jackson Michael Vic and then just X would be sort of the other end of the spectrum I don't know exactly what that means um but interesting he he talks about how a lot of people liken him to Josh Allen and the idea behind Willis is hey if Josh Allen can develop from just this raw thing with a Canon for an arm then maybe Malik Willis can too then a little bit further on it's says uh where did it go Denver tried it with Drew lock Green Bay tried it with Jordan love and New York might be thinking Zack Wilson is the guy all three might develop into starters but the Gap they have to travel just to become competent starters is as great as the gap between a competent starter and an elite passer it's funny because one of those examples of a team that really believes in themselves and their ability to develop something really impressive but super raw was the Green Bay Packers and they did it and by the way it looked like it was a massive failure for many many years Jordan I mean let's just be completely honest he looked terrible and every time we looked at him every training camp every time he stepped onto the field the first time it was like holy crap was against the Eagles it was like oh please let this be a thing so you know again I'm I'm not saying I'm necessarily a Believer but sometimes it works and the Packers are one of the few teams that took a swing and was patient enough and it panned out Josh Chen being another one I mean they they weren't patient with him but you know they they figured out how to develop him over what 3 years or so I think his first two years were really rough he's sitting right here let me look at him Josh yeah it was it was year three he was never terrible necessarily but as far as the grades are concerned he was kind of mid mid looking like he was just never going to pan out and then year three 90.3 grades when he just exploded um but again similar to Jordan love so it makes sense that the same team that's like bro we did it with Jord what if you know what I mean like yeah these other teams couldn't develop him he sucked I don't give a crap they went out and got Dillard seemed like they got some decent decent results from Dillard I'm not saying he's going to be a great player but this is the year of let's go get all the guys that are massively talented and just see what we can do why not why freaking not why can't Malik be the next Jordan love you know how many people said Jordan love is trash look at his college career look what he's doing in the pros for every reason the guy's garbage and fair enough there wasn't a ton to come back with there wasn't a ton other than you're being shortsighted and it's not impossible and he's got the talent he's just got to kind of harness it etc etc I don't think most people expected Jordan to be what he is aside from the people in Green Bay who picked him up so now again it's not as though these all are exactly the same thing like Drew lock is the exact same Talent as Zack Wilson and Jordan love and Josh and Malik Willis like they're all the same guy there there's there's a spectrum of potential and they're all different in their own way I mean even uh Jaylen Herz he's a late second round guy for a reason Jaylen Herz was similar to Malik Willis like there's some unbelievable tools here but um might not go very well and again his first year didn't grade out super good year two got better year three now he's that dude goes on to talk about how they're they're different right Willis is not the next Allen um he says what I find fascinating is that I haven't seen any comparisons between Willis and Lamar Jackson the difference in arm Talent is probably the most logical reason Jackson throws for distance but his lack of velocity is a big reason why the Ravens have a unique offensive system although Allen is a rushing threat he's not a breakaway Runner Jackson and Willis are there's also another reason why Willis isn't generating the Jackson comparison Jackson was far more advanced of a thrower of the ball and pocket manager than either Allen or Willis so that they're kind of looking more at the rawness but I think what he's looking at is sort of you know the upside you're looking at more of a of a um Lamar Jackson than you are a Josh Allen he talks about a lot of the the negatives with Willis obviously that have that have you know the reason why I and a lot of people weren't buying the hype the reason why he wasn't buying the hype the reason why he probably hasn't developed into something to up to this point but after acknowledging that he says if Willis can mature in each of these areas of football there are tremendous physical gifts within his game to unlock Willis throws the ball with velocity like Alex Smith who had Gil Brandt proclaiming to Major media that it was the best pro day he ever saw he'll impress every time he gets to throw against air he already vowed beat writers at the combine which obviously has already passed the team that drafts Willis will need to provide patience and structure because Willis is more potential than reality he's better at reading leverage with man-to-man coverage than Zone which plays well into the ways the NFL likes to generate big plays in the passing game and with Willis's skills as a runner he'll make it difficult for teams to remain in zone coverage if they can't generate pressure with 79 players dropping back and that's again this is kind of what I talked about before with why why go with Malik as opposed to um some of the other guys including going out and finding another old washed up pocket passer and I think it's this I think it's it's it's one of those things where it's like he doesn't it's what I always said about mvs mvs wasn't a good football player but you always had to account for him you had to game plan for him because no matter what he has the speed you can't ignore him because you can't let him get behind you so as annoying as it is that we have to stretch the field because of that freaking guy you have to because if you don't they're going to uncork it to them and if they can connect on it they're just going to kill you so I mean you you have to account for it same thing with with Malik you know it's it's you want to be able to just say oh this is going to be easy he has limitations it's not because now you have to about contain as opposed to pressure you have to worry about um playing Zone instead of man you're worried about you know you play in man you get these guys' back turns around then all of a sudden uh he's taking off and running so now we got to be in zone that simplifies the field for him whereas other guys it's not going to be that simple you got to worry about bringing extra guys or dropping guys or all there's a lot of complexity not because he's even good but just based on his physicality he's really fast and he can launch the ball all the way down the field that stretches the field by itself what whether or not he can execute is a separate issue we still have to figure out how to defend against a a premier athletic Talent like this that makes the job easier for him and makes the job easier for Matt lefur to be able to get guys wide open for him to hopefully allow him to execute at a higher level at least I'm imagining that's the game plan um but again there's there's a lot of people who really liked them coming out I think um you know the regular season's been rough honestly in the preseason he's actually done quite well um year one he had a 63 grade but then it went 2023 77 2024 77 so um at least in the preseason he shown some growth uh this 2024 preseason 20 completions 205 yards two touchdowns and a pick one big time throw zero turnover worthy plays which means that wasn't that pick was not his fault it must have got tipped or something 104.7 passer rating which is by far the best his his previous highest passer rating was the year before it was a 79 so who's to say man who's to say 2024 isn't the year that he uh takes a step you're three Matt lefur getting his hands on him it's not like Tennessee was necessarily known for having the most brilliant offensive Minds defense maybe not necessarily offense oh [Music]