GMFB Monday — Seattle at 0 and 2, an AFC East nobody here can order, and a crown for a quarterback

SCHRAGER: Monday the twenty-first. Two weeks in, eight clubs are 2 and 0 and eight are 0 and 2, and in August I do not get ten of those sixteen right. Jamie has the weekend at twenty past. We have trivia, and the AFC East in the second hour, which I did not ask for —

ERDAHL: You asked for it.

SCHRAGER: I asked for it Friday. Friday is not this morning.

BRANDT: I have the leaders here. I have got them on paper.

TE’O: He has had that in his hand since the parking structure.

BRANDT: I printed it at home. My printer went.

ERDAHL: Nobody asked about the printer.

BRANDT: Not since March. And there is a line on this page I am going to need eleven minutes for later.

SCHRAGER: I am starting in Seattle.

TE’O: Ohh.

SCHRAGER: Yeah.

ERDAHL: Cleveland is in the second hour, for anybody here for that. After the East, before the crown.

BRANDT: It is going to be a long East.

SCHRAGER: Seattle.

SCHRAGER: February the eighth, Santa Clara. Seattle were in that football game. Seven months later they are 0 and 2 with thirty-seven points in two weeks.

SCHRAGER: Macdonald. Witherspoon. Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Leonard Williams. Sam Darnold, who has been somewhere else three times and had the best year of his life in that jersey... I am not taking one of those names off the page. They lost at home to New England, and Christian Gonzalez took three footballs off them in it. Then Arizona beat them 22 to 17.

SCHRAGER: And everybody has the same word ready and the word is hangover. I have used it twice in ten years and I was lazy both times. Manti, you are the one here who knows what the next August feels like.

TE’O: I lost one in January a long time ago. Not the same, I know it is not the same, but here is what was. Everybody is nice to you all spring. Nobody makes you watch it back. There is no meeting where they put it on — and then it is August and you still have not looked at it.

TE’O: And the calendar is real. They played into February. Their offseason is three weeks shorter than the club that finished 5 and 12.

ERDAHL: Then here is what I want, because nobody at home wants a mood. Is this February, or are they worse?

TE’O: I do not know.

ERDAHL: Give me a specific, then. One thing.

TE’O: Seventeen points against Arizona. That is the specific. That is a group that put up a lot more than that on better people in January.

SCHRAGER: Kyle, you have been quiet, which usually means something is coming.

BRANDT: We are all doing the poetry version and I want the other one. Everybody talks about February because February is fun to talk about. They lost by eleven at home and by five on the road. By five. That is one drive. A holding call and a punt.

BRANDT: Not a rebuild. Not an injury story. Nobody is getting fired. In my opinion this is six or seven plays across two Sundays, and if two go the other way Peter opens the show with the Chargers. Do you follow me? We are not describing a football team. We are describing a scoreboard.

BRANDT: And I do not enjoy this one. I watched every snap they played in January and it was the best football anybody played, and now people will say hangover at them until they beat somebody by twenty. They will beat somebody by twenty. I would rather be embarrassed about this in September than in December.

SCHRAGER: I will take that over anything I have read since Friday.

SCHRAGER: Seattle, 0 and 2, and I have moved them almost nowhere. Jamie.

ERDAHL: Thursday night, first game in the new building in Buffalo. Detroit 21, Buffalo 18. Detroit had given up forty-two to New Orleans nine days earlier and for nine days every word about them was the defence. Manti. Which Detroit did we watch?

TE’O: Thursday. Thursday is the one, and I am saying that as a guy who was wrong about them on this show last Monday.

ERDAHL: So what was Week 1?

TE’O: Week 1 was a shootout and the last team with the ball won it. You can lose 42 to 36 and have played all right. You do not hold Buffalo to eighteen on a short week unless somebody fixed something.

BRANDT: Jared Goff has thrown six touchdown passes. That is the most in the league and that club is 1 and 1.

ERDAHL: Philadelphia 44, Tennessee 6. Philadelphia are 2 and 0, fewest yards allowed in football, and Nakobe Dean has twenty-eight tackles, most in the league. Tennessee have scored thirteen a game. Fewest in the sport.

BRANDT: Thirteen a game is not a bad offence. Thirteen a game is a thing you have to go out of your way to do.

TE’O: Cam Ward is in year two and he will be fine, and I do not want that clip being about him.

ERDAHL: Los Angeles 37, Las Vegas 6. The Chargers are 2 and 0, Quentin Johnston leads football in catches and yards, twenty and two seventy-five, and Khalil Mack has four and a half sacks and leads that too.

BRANDT: Quentin Johnston. Three years of people being horrible to that man online and he is the leading receiver in football.

SCHRAGER: He never once said anything back. Not once. I watched for it.

TE’O: Las Vegas are 0 and 2 and I have watched both and I have got nothing nice for you.

ERDAHL: Players of the week. AFC offensive, Daniel Jones, twenty-three of thirty-eight, three fifty-eight, four scores, Indianapolis 2 and 0. NFC offensive, Jayden Daniels, thirteen completions, three hundred yards, five touchdowns —

BRANDT: Thirteen.

ERDAHL: Thirteen of twenty-three.

BRANDT: Five touchdowns on thirteen completions and Washington are 1 and 1. Explain that to me at a break, not now.

ERDAHL: NFC defensive, Kyler Gordon, seven tackles, two interceptions, Chicago 2 and 0. AFC defensive, Carson Schwesinger of the Cleveland Browns, who we have in the second hour.

SCHRAGER: Second hour. Trivia.

ERDAHL: Through two weeks, who leads the National Football League in punting average? No conferring.

TE’O: Is it a Raider.

BRANDT: Carlisle Waitman.

TE’O: Corliss.

BRANDT: Corliss Waitman, 57.3.

ERDAHL: Corliss Waitman, 57.3, read off a page he printed at his house, so nobody gets a point.

SCHRAGER: Fifty-seven three is preposterous.

BRANDT: It is, and here is my problem with it. Punting average is the only number on this page that goes up when your team gets worse. You go three and out on your own eleven, he punts from the end zone, gets a bounce, sixty-two. Congratulations.

TE’O: That is not true though.

BRANDT: Which part.

TE’O: Jason Sanders has six field goals, most in the league, and Miami are 1 and 1. You do not get six field goals on a good team. You get touchdowns.

BRANDT: That is a completely different thing.

TE’O: It is the same thing.

BRANDT: It is not, because the kicker is handed a situation and the punter is handed a failure —

ERDAHL: A punter would not describe it that way.

BRANDT: A punter would describe it exactly that way, they are the most honest men in the sport —

SCHRAGER: Can I defend Corliss Waitman for one second.

BRANDT: No.

SCHRAGER: Hang. Fifty-seven three , and his name is in nobody’s highlight and he does not care. Craft. Nerve. And a get-off under two seconds or he is on the news.

ERDAHL: We are four minutes into a punter.

BRANDT: Good.

ERDAHL: Two more and we are out. Bo Nix has more passing yards than anybody, eight forty-nine, and more interceptions than anybody, four, tied with Baker Mayfield.

TE’O: Denver lead football in total yards too. Thirteen ten.

ERDAHL: And Travis Etienne has four rushing touchdowns, most in the league, and Jacksonville are 0 and 2.

BRANDT: There is one more on here and I am not doing it now.

ERDAHL: Do it now.

BRANDT: It is a crown. I am not spending a crown at twenty to nine in the morning.

ERDAHL: Pittsburgh 30, New England 3, at Foxborough. A week earlier Atlanta beat Pittsburgh 30 to 3. Same numbers, turned around, seven days.

BRANDT: I want that framed.

ERDAHL: And New England had just gone into Seattle and won. Buffalo 1 and 1, Miami 1 and 1, New England 1 and 1, the Jets 0 and 2. In order, Manti.

TE’O: Buffalo, New England, Miami, the Jets.

ERDAHL: Buffalo lost at home on Thursday.

TE’O: By three. To Detroit.

ERDAHL: Peter.

SCHRAGER: New England, Buffalo, the Jets, Miami. Vrabel’s club has the fewest yards in football, five forty-nine, and Christian Gonzalez has four interceptions in two games. They are winning a way you are not supposed to be able to win any more.

BRANDT: They scored three points at home.

SCHRAGER: They did.

BRANDT: At home. Three.

SCHRAGER: And the week before that they went into Seattle and beat the club that played in the Super Bowl.

ERDAHL: Kyle.

BRANDT: No.

ERDAHL: Kyle.

BRANDT: I am not ranking that division. Nobody can rank that division. Three clubs at the same record, none of them have played the same football, and the one at the bottom is 0 and 2 and might be second by October.

TE’O: So you have got the Jets second.

BRANDT: I have got the Jets fourth this morning. In three weeks I will have them second.

ERDAHL: That is a ranking. You gave me a ranking.

BRANDT: Buffalo, the Jets, New England, Miami. Under protest.

SCHRAGER: Three orders, four teams, and nobody here has Miami above third. Cleveland after this.

SCHRAGER: Fifty-four to fourteen at Raymond James, as a road underdog. Here is the number that stopped me yesterday: the Cleveland Browns are the highest scoring team in the National Football League. Eighty-nine points in two football games. Tampa went nought for eleven on third down. They did not see the red zone.

SCHRAGER: I have one thing and it is small. After the eighty-seven-yard touchdown in the first quarter, Darnell Savage came off and went to the end of that bench on his own, and he asked to come out of the football game. He asked twice. Two people, one of whom does not work for the Cleveland Browns. The answer came back through a position coach and the answer was no. They put him in something else instead and he intercepted a pass in the fourth.

ERDAHL: Who said no?

SCHRAGER: Neither of them would give me that.

ERDAHL: Then that is where the story is. A head coach saying no and a secondary coach saying no on a headset are two different mornings. Did you go back at them?

SCHRAGER: Twice each, and I got nothing twice each. So you are getting what I can stand behind and not the version I like better.

TE’O: And a room clocks that faster than it clocks anything. Eleven other men watched a guy have the worst quarter of his year and stay out there.

TE’O: Carson Schwesinger. Eleven tackles, four behind the line, a sack, two interceptions, four balls broken up, defensive player of the week in the conference. Twenty-three, wears the green dot, so he lines ten grown men up before the snap and he is younger than all of them. And he leads the sport in passes defensed. A linebacker. Linebackers do not lead the league in that.

ERDAHL: Kurt, eight minutes. Twenty-nine carries for eighty-four yards, and twenty-six of thirty-five for three twenty-eight and two, plus a fifteen-yard touchdown run. Start where you want.

WARNER: Eighty-four yards! Twenty-nine carries! 2.9 a carry, & I want people to understand what that does to a quarterback. Second & eight is a pass. Third & three is a pass. Everybody in that stadium knows it, & Vita Vea never has to think about a run — six behind the line, six, I checked that twice.

WARNER: So put me in there. Second & eight, I am in the gun, & the three-technique is on my centre before my back foot lands. The pocket is a corridor. I get one hitch. One. & what this kid did over and over is get to the top of the drop, let it go on time, keep his eyes up while he slid two yards. Not one all-arm throw off his back foot in three hours. That is a year-four thing.

WARNER: & while I am here. Last Monday I said most of what he did in Jacksonville was on schedule, which is the highest thing I say about a young player — & somebody cut four seconds of it & put GAME MANAGER on the screen & I spent Tuesday on my phone. On schedule means he sees it before the snap & trusts it after, & almost nobody at twenty-four does the second half of that.

ERDAHL: Then what do you still not know about him?

WARNER: Easy. He has not been behind. Two games, against two clubs who have not won yet, & he has never played from fourteen down in a fourth quarter, which is a different sport — that is where you hold it the half second longer & that is where the interceptions live! I do not know what he looks like there. Neither does he! Ask me in November.

BRANDT: I will do the other side and it is not hard. Jacksonville and Tampa Bay are 0 and 4 between them. Tampa have given up eighty-six points, more than anybody in football, and Todd Bowles calls that defence himself. No coordinator over there, he decided that in the spring, and it is going the way it is going. Cleveland have beaten two bad clubs. That is all of it.

BRANDT: And they did it by twenty-eight and by forty, on the road, both times, and Carolina come in Sunday and Carolina are not bad. I do not know what this is. I have got no name for it and I am not putting one on it in September. I am watching it every week and I have moved my Sunday twice to do it.

SCHRAGER: Twenty-three years old with the green dot. And a corner who stayed on the field.

SCHRAGER: Carolina at Cleveland Sunday, and then Pittsburgh at Cleveland on the Thursday night, the first of October, which I have had circled since May. Kurt, thank you, go and do your show.

WARNER: Any time!

BRANDT: This is what was on the page. Yards per carry, league leader, all positions: Bryce Young, eight point eight.

TE’O: That cannot be right.

BRANDT: It is right and it has been right since one o’clock yesterday. Eight point eight. Ahead of every running back in professional football. He is not fast. He is not big. He is the smallest quarterback anybody has taken first in thirty years and he is out-averaging Josh Jacobs by a distance you cannot see the end of.

ERDAHL: Jacobs has two hundred and eighty-three yards. Most in the league.

BRANDT: Jacobs gets a crown every year. Jacobs has a shelf. This one goes to a quarterback, and Manti is already doing the face.

TE’O: Quarterbacks slide.

BRANDT: The crown goes to the run. It has never been about who was carrying it.

TE’O: There is no rule. You made the rule up in the car this morning.

BRANDT: I made it up in the car in 2019 and it has been the rule ever since, and that is how a rule works.

ERDAHL: He beat Atlanta on Sunday, for anybody who did not see it, and Carolina are 1 and 1.

BRANDT: He beat Atlanta, and for a stretch he was the leading rusher in that stadium, and every one of them was a man deciding on his own, with nobody blocking for him, to go and get eleven yards, and then getting up like it had been the plan. Somebody over there has a spreadsheet where this makes sense and I want to see it.

TE’O: It is going to regress.

BRANDT: Everything regresses. Corliss Waitman will regress. This morning it says eight point eight.

SCHRAGER: He said the punter’s name right.

BRANDT: I have said it right all day.

TE’O: Carlisle.

BRANDT: One time.

SCHRAGER: Into The Booth, Thursday night, Kirk Herbstreit, and he does not say anything, which is the whole entry. Opening kickoff, first one ever in that building, seventy-odd thousand people who waited a long time for it, the ball goes up, and Herbstreit says nothing. Eleven seconds. I counted it back twice because I thought we had lost audio.

SCHRAGER: There is a producer in his ear and a graphic ready, and he let seventy thousand people be the sound. Restraint. Taste. And when he came back in he had one sentence about a man in the north end with the same seat since 1974... he did not have to do any of that.

ERDAHL: Tomorrow, Manti has Carolina, I have the waiver wire, which nobody wants, and Kyle owes me a printer explanation.

BRANDT: The printer has never been the issue.

TE’O: You said in the open it had not worked since March.

BRANDT: Since March, and now it works, which is what I said.

SCHRAGER: Eight clubs at 2 and 0, eight at 0 and 2, and one of the eight is Seattle, which is where we came in. Tomorrow.