Shocking Stats from 2019 + Buy or Sell

I think, for the Rams. There was some garbage games, garbage time games. But I think that the passing game was fine. I mean, you had Cooper Cup tearing it up for a while. And then you had, obviously, Robert Woods, very consistent in the second half of the year. And the Higby. The Higby breakout really changed things. I think the real issue here was the offensive line in the running game. So coming into this season.

we should have been able to see that there was major offensive line problems. I feel like, you know, it's always hard to say, is this just hindsight being 2020 and being like, oh, well, duh, or coming. That's how I like to do my analysis. Coming into the scenes. Duh. Because so much talk was made about Todd Gurley's knee. Yeah, duh. And whether or not they're going to use him. And they drafted a high running back. And.

You know, it was all Gurley. And so I guess the question is, do you think their running game is because of Gurley himself, the man, his knee, his ability? Do you think it was the offensive line? Do you think it was a combination of both? It's always a combo of both, but in terms of weight of where I'm putting, I'm putting the majority of the blame on the offensive line. But I do think that Gurley's having...

that skill set is going to degrade and it's going to start degrading more and more every year because of the knee. Yeah, I mean, I put it almost entirely on the offensive line. I didn't really see anything from Gurley that looked any different than the Jeff Fisher years, which were bad when they had no offensive line there, when it was like, I kept wanting to think, oh, he looks a little slower, even, you know, why isn't he outrunning? He's a guy that when you give him those opportunities, he can break away amazing plays.

For some weird, strange reason, they didn't utilize him in the passing game the way that they had the few years prior. And maybe that is due to the offensive line, the scheming, bringing more tight ends in to help block. But, yeah, teams can change. What's another team? So the 49ers, rushing yards in 2018, they were 13th. I mean, Kyle Shanehan, he likes to establish it. Passing yards, they were 15th. And a point scored, they were 21st.

Pretty mediocre across the board. That jumped all the way to second in rushing yards per game, stayed in the middle at passing yards 13th, but jumped up to second in points scored per game, scoring nearly 30 points a game. Does this seem sustainable?

I don't know that it's sustainable, but we knew it was going to rock it up from where they were because the year prior in 2018, the rushing yards to rushing touchdown number was completely the opposite. It was very similar to what we see with other teams where you just know positive regression is coming. You say there's no way you can have this many yards with this few of touchdowns.

all other Jaguars this season. If you have that many rushing yards again next year, that much opportunity, the scores will come. They also didn't have their starting quarterback two years ago. Yeah, that's certainly not going to help you, although... No, it's not. C.J. Bethard, I mean, maybe he would have won that Super Bowl. Whoa! Whoa! I just want to start the fire. Skip Bayless. That's your skip?

Yeah, that was my skip. Nicely done. Another team who turned things around the wrong direction. Wagons East. Oh, there's a good junk candy reference from people out there. Yeah. The Bears. The Bears. 2018, 11th in rushing yards per game, 21st and passing yards per game. We call that the Tribisky model. Ninth in points scored. So they were still a solid team.

They flipped the script, went from 11th and rushing to 27th, 25th in passing yards per game, and plummeted to 29th in scoring. Can the Bears get things fixed? And was this a Jordan Howard situation? I think this was a combination of two things. One is Jordan Howard. He doesn't get enough respect and genuinely from anybody, including our show.

Jordan Howard is not someone that we just look at as this phenomenal running back, but he might just be. He might just be a really great running back because all he's done is be really good everywhere. And when he just left, it was, you know, the bears were like, man, I wish we could run like when we had Jordan Howard. The other side of it, though, is they had horrendous injuries to their tight end position. And the bears utilized the tight ends or at least want to. They couldn't because they didn't, at one point it felt like they didn't even have.

one on the roster. Like Cordero Patterson went to the coach and was like, I'll play tight end if you need me to because we don't have any. And so I expect them to go heavy at that in free agency since that's such a key to their running game and their offensive system. Matt Nagy coming from, you know, Andy Reid's coaching tree. So, you know, part of that is that. But I do think David Montgomery.

is not as good. Whoa, we're already back? Yeah, look, it's a full circle. That's where I started with him. The first nickname I gave David Montgomery was David Montgomery, because I thought his college tape was very uninspiring. And he was good at everything, great at nothing. And I gave him a comp of the last five years, Frank Gore. Like, he's, he's solid. He can do it, but he's not going to light things up. And, uh, yeah, so can they turn it around?

Yes, but I don't think it's going to be some great running team the next year. All right, well, let's put your skip mask back on. Unless they get Cam Newton. Oh, unless the Bears get Cam Newton? Yeah, then you're in? Then I'm into their running game for sure. All right. Hot. I need hot takes, though. Okay. Because we're talking about teams that are going to turn things around as we were talking about with Devante Parker. Last off season, if you were standing here.

saying into the microphone that Devante Parker is about to break out, be awesome, win fantasy championships. Our show would have been canceled. They would have removed it from all podcast players. It would be done. If you had said, the San Francisco 49ers are going to be a quarter away from winning the Super Bowl. Once again, our show would have already been canceled. So, try to get the show canceled with a hot take. Who's turning it around? And this could be...

Both ways. You can go with the wagons east approach if you want, say this team dominating. I see a huge swing of the pendulum to them to shift to the bottom or someone rising to the top. Your call. Okay. I'll give you one of each. I'm going to start with the top to the bottom. And I'm going to say that the Baltimore Ravens are going to have a very not fun crashed earth next season. All right. So let's.

Let's extrapolate on that a little bit. So Baltimore, 33 points a game. That was first place over, and the Niners were second at under 30 points. So the Baltimore Ravens were scoring tons and tons of points. I'm not saying that they fall to fifth. I'm saying that they fall out of the top 10. Oh, okay. I'm saying that. All right. There we go. Yeah, because when you have an entire off season.

with a full tape of the Greg Roman offense for Lamar Jackson. You can go back and look at, okay, we push, you know, the Titans are pushing Lamar Jackson to the sidelines and not letting them have the middle of the field. Finding out how to stop this offense that when you watch, you just go, it is unstoppable. Now, I tried that against my son and Madden. I used a bunch of the game tape and him just calling the same play over and over, but I can't stop him. Yeah.

Just saying. Lamar Jackson's a freak. Yes. Everybody thinks I could tackle him here and they can't. I certainly don't. But the 9% touchdown passing rate that will come down will come crashing down. And if they can figure out a little bit more of the RPO stoppers with an entire off season, I think that there could be struggles there on offense next year. So that.

That's the one that I think going from, you know, the top to the bottom. That will have a bit of fall. I'm going to take the low hanging fruit. I will say the Pittsburgh Steelers go from one of the worst offenses to a top 15 offense. Yeah, that's hot takes. Oh, super hot. How about? Super safe hot takes. How about the New York Giants? Okay. What are they going to do?

They're going to get worse? How? No, I think they take... Because they weren't the worst. I think they take a great step forward on offense, and I think that Daniel Jones can show that he's got this. All right. Bye-bye. He's got this. He's got this. That is not the way you inspire confidence. If Daniel Jones came into the huddle with that voice, don't worry, guys. I got this.

Okay is not okay. Exactly. No, but my point is, Darius Slayton was a rookie this year. What about Corey Coleman? Sure. You know, Golden Tate, Darius Slayton, and Sterling Shepard. Coming into this past season, it seemed like the Giants really need some wide receiver help.

next year we might be saying wow they've got three of the best wide receivers out there and if daniel jones you know steps just stop fumbling because daniel jones moved the ball fine you can't score when you fumbled he had 18 fumbles that's not possible that's not he didn't even start the whole year just stop fumbling the ball daniel jones and then of course you got sequin so they could end up being a surprisingly powerful offense i think let's get into the mailbag

Mailbag. Mail bag. All right. This one comes in from Twitter. Milk? I don't know what's going on there, but it's at underscore underscore DeVu 16. Dynasty League, Jason. Rake, Joseph Mixon, Devin Singletary, Joshua Jacobs. I like all three in Dynasty, but I would order them Joshua Jacobs, Joe Mixon.

That was where I wasn't sure what you would do. Singletary, we all love him, but you can't put him at the top of this list or even second yet. No. So you would take Jacobs over Joe Mixing in a dynasty league just because of age? Well, you already have the age issue of, you know, you've got more years. It's not like Joe Mixen is an old guy, but Josh Jacobs coming in as a rookie.

He looked electric. Neither one of those guys really caught passes. And we could talk about, oh, Jaylon Rashar, you know, maybe Josh Jacobs doesn't get involved in the passing game, but maybe Joe Mixen doesn't either. They both are capable. I'm going to take the younger guy with the higher draft capital who came out in his rookie year and looked phenomenal. I think Josh Jacobs has a brighter future. This one's from Twitter from Ethan Roberts. If you could institute a new rule or remove a rule from the NFL.

What would it be and why? Okay. Any new rule. I can jump in here if you don't have one. Go. So we had a lot of questions come in, of course, about the XFL. So first, Jay, did you watch any of the XFL over the weekend? I am happy to report. I did not catch any of it.

I'm not ashamed to report. I'm not happy to report that. But I'm not ashamed to say I did not catch any of the XFL. We want the XFL to succeed. Heck yeah, man. I love football. More football. Go football. But I didn't get to watch a ton of it. I'd say I probably watched 20 minutes or so. But the best thing that I saw, I saw a play go-to-review. They called it a first down on the field. It looked like the spot was a little bit questionable.

The booth called down, said we got to do a review. The entire review process is 100% transparent. You get the audio feed of the booth talking to the head referee. Oh, that's nice. Going through it. And there's none of this bull crap. A referee has to run over, look at a booth. And because he's the one on the field, he's the one who has to make the call, even though he can't control the technology that proves what did or did not happen.

So the guy in the booth, this review took 30 to 45 seconds. That's what I was going to ask, how long? The guy in the booth said, hey, man, it looked like he's a little bit short. The spot was too far. You're going to have to back him up to the 48. It's going to be third and one. Also, this was a rolling clock situation, so you need to reset the game clock to 418. And then the ref says, thank you. It's like, all right, man. Have it. And it was done.