Four sacks, fourteen yards

[cold open. Nine seconds lifted from 1:11:40 of the same stream. No setup.]

Rogers: You cannot put a punter on a big board.

Sikkema: I have put a punter on a big board.

Rogers: And how did that go for you.

Sikkema: Not well, brother. It did not go well for anybody.

[hard cut to the opening bell graphic]

Sikkema: Welcome to the opening bell of the NFL Stock Exchange podcast.

Rogers: You got it.

Sikkema: I got it first time. Write it down. Trevor Sikkema, that is Connor Rogers, Tyler is back there, and it is the Monday after week one. And before the football we are doing punter trivia, because I said we would last week and then I did not, and Kevin has been in my replies about it for six days, and Kevin, I want you to know that I saw all of them.

[trivia runs 4:31 to 12:58. The chat wins.]

Rogers: The chat won.

Sikkema: The chat won and I got the last one wrong on purpose because I love this community. That is a lie. Okay.

13:20 · “Football Starts Here”

Sikkema: Cleveland thirty‑five, Jacksonville seven, and I want to say up front that I watched it once live like everybody, then I watched the twenty‑four throws Sunday night, and then this morning I watched Concepcion’s six targets, I want to say nine or ten times, because that is what I wanted to know.

Rogers: Mhm.

Sikkema: Six targets. Six catches. A hundred and nineteen yards. Now, the fifty‑five is fifty‑five of that, so the other five catches are sixty‑four yards, which is a nothing afternoon, that is a Tuesday. On three of those five he runs a route from a stack with a body in front of him and catches it standing still and turns up. None of that requires the release.

Rogers: Right.

Sikkema: Then the fifty‑five. And here is what I keep going back to. Jacksonville put a corner on him in press, on the line, with nothing over the top of him. Nothing behind. And the corner never gets his hands on him. He gives him one hard step inside, the corner turns his hips, and after the hips turn it is a footrace and Concepcion wins that footrace by four yards without appearing to try. The catch is the least interesting thing that happens on the play.

Rogers: And it is third and short.

Sikkema: It is third and short with play action, which is a call, and I am going to say the thing and then you are going to hate it. Somebody in that building looked at a third and one and decided the highest‑percentage thing available was a shot down the field off a run fake because Jacksonville had been eating the run all day. That is a good call. I do not know how else to describe a call that turns third and one into a fifty‑five yard gain.

Rogers: It is a good call.

Sikkema: Thank you.

Rogers: It is a call, Trevor. I am not going to sit here and grade a man’s coaching off a call I liked. I have liked calls from people who were fired in November.

Sikkema: Then what would do it. Honest question. What is the thing that would do it for you.

Rogers: I don’t know. Ask me at Thanksgiving.

Sikkema: Okay. That is fine. That is a fair answer, I just, I mean, yeah. Okay. Boston.

Sikkema: Denzel Boston, four catches, fifty‑four, and a twenty‑nine yard kick return. I am counting that as a scouting win. I had him twenty‑second overall, he went thirty‑ninth, and I said it eleven times in April while everybody argued about the two picks in front of him.

Sikkema: Now Delpit. And I want this on the record, because I do not think it is going to be in any of the write‑ups this week. Grant Delpit played the whole afternoon as the big slot, outside the box, over the number two, on the hash. Nine tackles, one behind the line, a break‑up, a forced fumble. Everybody can see that.

Rogers: Sure.

Sikkema: But the reason it matters is not what Delpit does. It is what it lets Schwesinger do. If your safety is standing there at seven yards on the hash, your linebacker does not have to chase anybody out of the box. He gets to stay downhill and read the guard, which he is better at than anything else he does. Seven tackles, two for loss. Every single one of those is a play where he is going forward from the snap. He never had to turn and run once.

Rogers: That is the version of that defense that works.

Sikkema: And it is an alignment decision. It is not a coverage. It does not look like anything on television.

58:44 · What Jacksonville was on Sunday

Rogers: Can I do my page. I wrote “Jacksonville, first impressions” at the top and there are four things under it and three of them are about their offensive line, so this is going to be boring.

Sikkema: Go.

Rogers: Lawrence went fifteen of twenty for a hundred and sixty‑two. Seventy‑five percent. And his team had ten first downs. Ten. So before anybody tells me Cleveland’s defense was a wall, Jacksonville ran twenty‑three times for sixty‑five and then stopped calling runs, and they stopped calling runs because they were down fourteen at half and twenty‑one after three, and they were down twenty‑one after three because Cleveland punted once all day. The other team never had the ball with a lead.

Sikkema: That is the fairest version of it.

Rogers: And it is also hard to say much about Cleveland’s secondary off a game where they were on the field for thirty‑eight snaps of consequence and leading the whole time. I would not conclude anything about that group today. I have got Darnell Savage giving up sixty‑six on one play to Travis Hunter, two break‑ups as good as anything he has done in his career, and a third down each to Thomas and Meyers. I have written down “mixed” and I am leaving it there.

Sikkema: The Hunter one, though. He gets stacked. He is not beaten on a double move, he is not turned around, Hunter just runs through his outside shoulder and takes the space. That is a size thing.

Rogers: Correct.

Rogers: Also Josh Hines‑Allen had no sacks and it was the rookie on him most of the day, by himself. I had that rookie in the twenties in April, he went ninth, I said at the time it was too high, and I am not taking that back off one Sunday against a team that was flat. He was good on Sunday. Both sentences are on the page in my handwriting.

Sikkema: I had him twenty‑six. And Lemon eleven and Concepcion seventeen, which people keep forgetting when they send me things.

1:51:15 · Super Chats

Sikkema: Five dollars Tony Lee, and that is not a dumb question, that is a question most people watching football have never been told the answer to, and then they nod along anyway because it feels rude to ask. The league lives around forty percent, give or take, depending on the year and who is counting. A good offense is in the mid forties. Eight for eleven is seventy‑three, which is not a good day, it is a day that does not exist over a season. It comes back down. It always comes back down.

Rogers: And it is the number I would look at first every week for the rest of the year, if you want one number to follow. That one and the sack count.

Sikkema: Fifty dollars, Tim, thank you, that is a lot of money for a bad answer. No. I do not think they are good. I think they were a lot better on Sunday than I thought they were, which is not the same thing. I said twelve or thirteen losses. I am not going to stand on a Monday and pretend I have a new number when what I have is one game. Ask me after Tampa.

Rogers: I said nine and a half looked right and they won by twenty‑eight, so I was as wrong as it is possible to be about a single game, and I would say the same thing again with the same information.

Sikkema: You would.

Rogers: I would. Ninety‑four degrees, rookie centre, number one run defence. I would write the same four words down.

Rogers: Two dollars from Duval and honestly that is worth more than the fifty.

Sikkema: It is. Look, Jacksonville was thirteen and four and the market had already priced some of that down before a snap was played. The win total was eight and a half. That is the market saying they thought last year was a bit of a mirage. Sunday is a data point on that too and everybody is only going to talk about the other team.

2:22:05 · Outro

Sikkema: Appreciate everybody with the Super Chats, appreciate the six thousand of you who sat here for two and a half hours on a Monday. Wednesday we are back with the rookie report, which means I have to watch every first rounder in the league instead of the two everybody wants to argue about. Thanks, folks.

Description Trevor and Connor on Cleveland 35, Jacksonville 7. Concepcion’s six targets, Delpit in the big slot, what Jacksonville was on Sunday, plus Bo Nix. Super Chats and Trolling Trevor at 1:51. #NFL #Browns #Jaguars
Edited by Tyler Cook. Chef out.