WAY TOO EARLY NFL AWARDS

The podcast discusses the middle of the season award winners in the NFL, including MVP, offensive player of the year, defensive player of the year, offensive rookie of the year, defensive rookie of the year, and coach of the year. The New England Patriots upset the Buffalo Bills in a thrilling game, with Mack Jones performing exceptionally well. The Buffalo Bills' offense struggled, particularly with Josh Allen's decision-making. The Baltimore Ravens dominated the Detroit Lions, with Lamar Jackson leading the way. The Detroit Lions' offense struggled to find their rhythm against Baltimore's strong defense. All right, we are back ladies and gentlemen, another week means another podcast. We have some very interesting things to talk about this week. We of course have a few big games from this Sunday, but I wanted to do something a little special, something that truthfully I probably should have done a week or so ago, but we are going to talk about this like middle of the season award winners. We're about a third of the way through the season right now, I want to say, which seems crazy because it feels like it just started. There's no way we're about to be in week eight, but I'm going to give you right now, if the season ended today, who I think is going to win every major award. And that of course is the MVP, the offensive player of the year, the defensive player of the year, the offensive rookie of the year, defensive rookie of the year, and coach of the year. All right here, so let's get into the episode. There are only two games I actually want to talk about from this weekend of football, and one of them means so much to me personally, and it was the New England Patriots beating the Buffalo Bills in an absolute thriller of an upset. No one saw this coming, no one was out here predicting the Patriots to win, and why should they be? The Patriots had one win all year, and they looked miserable, they were coming off an awful, awful, awful stretch of losing to New Orleans by 34, and losing to Brian Hoyer, so no one thought they were going to be able to go toe-to-toe with Buffalo, and they did. New England played the best football I've seen in years, man. That was like prime, vintage, Mack Jones, rookie year stuff. He had time in the pocket, which was incredible. They fed rookie receiver DeMario Douglas, who could probably be a game-changer for New England. Kendrick Bourne was also out there, and everything just flowed a lot smoother. The run game was nice, Mack Jones could, like, think freely, he wasn't constantly under duress, and it was really nice to see a, like, classic Patriots, like, go-get-em win. They had, they were in the lead for a while, and then they lost it with two minutes to go, and I thought it was over, truthfully, because how many times have we seen Mack Jones almost pull off a comeback win, but get stopped short? We've seen it so many times. It happens at least three times a year, so I wasn't getting my hopes up. I was like, you know, we'll see what happens, we'll see where it takes us, and I didn't have any expectations, but then all of a sudden, he threw a screen pass from Andre Stevenson, took it like 30 yards, dude, I was out of my seat. I was on my feet, I was jumping up and down, I knew they could do that. The offensive looked so smooth all day, and that was the play they needed to jumpstart the drive. But, taking a step back, and looking at what Buffalo did, they are just not the caliber of team that everyone thought they were going into the year. Their offensive line is rough, the Patriots were getting pressure all day, and if Josh Allen isn't the absolute physical freak of nature that he is, he's getting sacked probably six or seven times. He only turned it into one because he's just able to outrun guys, he's so big, it's hard to get him down. The Patriots were getting straight shots at this guy, but he just couldn't ever make the play because Josh Allen is so big and so strong. However, for as strong as he is, and as talented of an athlete as he is, sometimes he's just an awful, awful, awful decision maker. How many times have I said that on this podcast? Some of the things he does, I think he gets caught up in his own head that he's an NFL superstar, you know? I feel like he has realized so much that he's so talented, and that his arm is so strong, and that he's capable of making these crazy, explosive plays, that he always just assumes that's what's going to happen any time he tries a risky, explosive play. And that's not what's going to happen. If you don't read out a play all the way, if you don't see what the defense is giving you correctly, you're going to end up getting intercepted, and that's what happened today. On his first pass attempt of the game, he threw it right to Jabril Peppers on the Patriots defense. And that set the tone for the defense in New England, and it set the tone for what was pretty lackluster of an offense in Buffalo. They didn't have too many explosive plays, except for one super-heater to Stephon Diggs. But other than that, the only thing that looked good on the Bill's offense was James Cook. There was no Gabe Davis. There was no Dawson Knox. Dawson Kincaid had a little bit of a coming out game today. He had one of his most productive games as a rookie. But the only thing that really created explosives was James Cook. He was strong in the running game. He was making guys miss. And overall, he was the real main source of offense and juice for that Bill's offense, which is something they haven't usually relied on because their running game has been so abysmal in the past. And you'd think now that it's better, their offense would flow a lot better. It would be a lot smoother. It would be more dimensional, which is how you create a really great offense. But the passing attack has not been on the same level as the rushing attack this year. So Buffalo needs to find a way to complement the running game with the passing game. And that's how you can make a truly explosive offense. Truthfully, those are my only notes from this game, except for the fact that it was just incredible. You always love those thrillers that come down to the last few seconds, regardless of what teams it is. So it was just a really fun game. Really glad that it was an upset. And we'll see what happens with Matt Jones, if this is, you know, his breakout game. He's getting back into his groove, because he looked really, really nice. 25 for 30, 272 in two touchdowns, no turnovers for the first time in God knows how long. It feels like every single week, I would check my phone, or I would watch the game back, and I see there's like the most horrific interception you've ever seen in your life. He didn't do that once today. I don't recall him putting the ball in harm's way once in the air. I don't think I saw any pass that looked like it should have been intercepted. So maybe this is a good sign for Matt Jones and his future as a New England Patriot. It's now time to talk about the beatdown of the week, man. This would have been the beatdown of the year had Miami not gone nuclear earlier in the year. Baltimore Ravens came out there, and they put up 30 on the Detroit Lions. And normally, putting up 30 isn't the craziest stat ever. The Lions are a great team, so getting 30 on them is impressive. But what really made it impressive from Baltimore is that they won 30 to 6. That was what made it crazy. They completely eliminated the Lions from the game. And every time I went to check in on this game, they always had a graphic up with Baltimore Ravens at 288 yards of offense, and Detroit had 16 or something piss poor like that. They absolutely came out swinging. Lamar Jackson punched Detroit in the mouth, and they had no response. You could see it. They were outgunned, and they started to get it going a little bit in the third quarter, Detroit did. But it wasn't enough. They ended up losing 38 to 6. You can't do that if you're supposed to be this top threat in the NFC. You can't be getting punched in the mouth like this by Nelson Aguilar putting touchdowns up on you. You know what I'm saying? He's a bum, but the only good thing I have for Detroit this week is that Jameer gives touchdowns. I know fantasy managers everywhere went crazy when that alert hit their phones. They drafted him in the third round, the fourth round, and he was looking like the bust of the season. And he got a crazy 20-yard touchdown. He got 11 carries. He got a whole lot of production. I think he probably popped off at about 28 fantasy points. So I just hope they all know it's over once David Montgomery comes back. So enjoy your time right now. Enjoy these next few weeks, but take him out your lineup soon. That's going to be a fantasy check later. In terms of long-season takeaways from this game, I only really have stuff to say about Baltimore. I don't think you should be taking too much out of this game from Detroit because what Baltimore did to Detroit is very hard to do. Every defensive coordinator knows to beat Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions, you've got to move Goff off his spot. You've got to light him up. You've got to get blitzes going. You've got to pressure Jared Goff. And it's hard to do that because not only is the Detroit offensive line really solid, Jared Goff has gotten considerably better at his pocket presence and stepping up in the pocket. And it reminds me of his 2018 self when they made it to the Super Bowl. So it's hard to knock that Detroit Lions offense out of rhythm, but when you can, it's effective and they can't really stop you from it if you can do it consistently. So congratulations to the Ravens. Their defense is looking special this year and their offense is looking special this year. And I know Jackson is playing flawless recently. He's got a super strong arm. He's elusive in the pocket again. The run game is back with him. I was worried that they weren't going to be running the ball as much with him since they got him new weapons and he's been injured so long. I was scared they were going to take a step back from that because that's what makes him so dynamic. That's what makes him so scary. That's what makes him such a threat in every possible way. And they haven't done that. Unfortunately, this offense looks fresh. It looks rejuvenated. All the playmakers stepped up today. A few weeks ago when we were talking about Baltimore and Pittsburgh, I was in shambles looking at this Baltimore offense back. There were drops everywhere. Crucial, crucial mistakes and dumb drops all over the board. That didn't happen today. They were making the most of every single target everyone got. Odell was making plays. Jay Flowers was making plays. Mark Andrews was making plays. And Rashad Bateman was making big plays. So it was just a perfect combination of everything going right for Baltimore. And if they can play like this, they're a Super Bowl team. And they're not always going to be able to play like this, unfortunately, just because this is the pinnacle top, top, top tier. And it would be ridiculous for me to assume that they could do that all the time. No one can do that all the time. But if they play like this consistently enough, they're definitely a top four team, top three team in the AFC, in my opinion. So now you just heard me talk about how great Lamar Jackson is, how dynamic he is, how perfect he's playing this year. So it's time to crown my one third of the way, way too early MVP prediction, and it's no one else but Lamar Jackson. He looks incredible. He's on the pace that he was when he won his first MVP years ago. He's just so special. He's just that guy, man. I don't know how else to explain it. Everything about him is sick. I can't verbalize how awesome of a football player Lamar Jackson is. He's elusive in the pocket, he can make you miss, he's the ultimate rushing threat. He can dice you up in the air, though. He's sometimes a little inaccurate, but so is almost every other guy in the league if your name isn't Aaron Rodgers or Patrick Mahomes. So Lamar Jackson is just so special in every way that you can't stop him, and that's why he's my MVP right now, if he keeps this up. Moving right along from MVP to Offensive Player of the Year, it's Christian McCaffrey. The MVP has kind of turned into who's the best quarterback and offensive player of the years, who's the best non-quarterback, that's how I've been treating it. And I think Christian McCaffrey should run away with this award right now. First of all, did you know that he's never won an Offensive Player of the Year? How is that possible? I feel like that's crazy to me, because he put up 2,000 total yards one year on crazy usage and they didn't give him the award, what was that, like 2018? They gave it to Mahomes, I'm looking it up now, so I guess. But they also gave Mahomes the MVP that year, so why would you give him both awards? That just seems ridiculously unfair to everyone else in the league. And I get Mahomes is great and all, but why give him the MVP and the Offensive Player of the Year when another guy had 2,000 all-purpose yards through the air and on the ground? That doesn't make any sense, that's just being mean, honestly, what the hell guys. Moving on, this year Christian McCaffrey is on an otherworldly pace. He's scored a touchdown in his last 15 straight games, and that's really hard to do. He has been used incredibly well in San Francisco, and it's showing off on the field. He's dynamic as ever, he's strong, he can power through guys, he can still make them miss, and it only gets more impressive as he gets older. He leads the league in rushing yards right now. He's the main reason the San Francisco 49ers offense has been productive over the last two weeks, because the passing attack has kind of dipped off for whatever reason. But CMC has not taken a hit yet. He had a brutal fumble last night on the, not the goal line, but in the red zone, which obviously sucks, but he bounced back, he scored a touchdown later in the game. And he's on my fantasy team, which is probably most important of all, so he's carrying me there too, which is a little bit of bias, but also just bringing some recognition to some great football. Jumping over to Defensive Player of the Year, right now the best player on defense is a no-brainer to me. You can argue with me about other guys for MVP and Offensive Player of the Year. Defensive Player of the Year, it's no one else except Myles Garrett. He is single-handedly winning the Browns games as a defensive end. It's just stuff that's unheard of. Every week he's a terror, he's destroying every offensive line in sight. He went toe-to-toe with Trent Williams and won, which is insane. Trent Williams has been the best tackle in football. Some guys who are like really into analytics, nerds, they said he's the best player in football. And Myles Garrett went up against him and made him look silly. So he's just on an otherworldly pace right now. And he's so cool with it, too. He'll do like a crossover on the line of scrimmage right before he's about to bull rush and sack your team's favorite quarterback. He's not safe, man. He's insane. Through seven weeks of NFL football, or sorry, the Browns have only played six games, so in six weeks of NFL football, he has six solo tackles, three forced fumbles, and seven and a half sacks, all in six weeks of football. The Browns' defense on their own is on a legendary pace. But what Myles Garrett is doing is legendary on his own. He's a freak athlete. He's smart. He's got a deep bag of pass-rushing moves. He can pull out anything in the book and get you. And he's just so fun to watch. So that's why he's easily my Defensive Player of the Year. Now it's time to talk about some rookies. We have Offensive Rookie of the Year and Defensive Rookie of the Year. For Offensive Rookie of the Year, there were a few good options to pick from. Stroud looks incredible. B. John Robinson is going to be great. For my Offensive Rookie of the Year, we're moving down to SoFi Stadium, baby. Puka Nakua, not only does he have the most fun name to say in the NFL, he is dicing up the league as a fifth-round rookie. Man, this is stuff we've never seen before out of someone drafted solo making an impact so fast. He is on a crazy pace right now. Through seven weeks, he has 752 yards. He is on pace for 18,000 yards as a rookie taken in the fifth round of the NFL Draft. You can't make this stuff up. He's averaging over 100 yards a game. It's just so impressive. It's not just he's getting an insane amount of volume and putting up crazy counting stats. He is sharing the field with Cooper Cupp and just put up a 150-receiving-yard game with Cooper Cupp on the other side. He is a legitimate threat, even with another all-pro wide receiver on his team. The Rams found the steel of the draft. He is the best wide receiver out of this class so far, which sounds crazy to say because who was saying Puka Nakua is going to be great around April? No one. His body control is amazing. His yards-after-catch ability is amazing. His deep ball speed is great. He can get vertical. He can stretch a defense out. Not only is he the top steel of the draft this year, he is my Offensive Rookie of the Year. The second pick for the Rookie Honors is Defensive Rookie of the Year. This one was a whole lot harder than Offensive Rookie of the Year, in my opinion. I'm a huge Puka Nakua fan. I think what he's doing is out-of-this-world impressive. For me to come out here and decide my Offensive Rookie of the Year, it was no question. For my Defensive Rookie of the Year, I'm not really sure. There's a lot of guys who are playing really well, but no one who's playing that much better than everyone else. My pick would have been Christian Gonzalez for the New England Patriots had he stayed healthy because what he was doing was insane. He was locking down the league's best receivers. In his first game of NFL action, he put Devontae Smith and A.J. Brown. He gave them less than 60 yards each. He locked down Tyreek Hill, who's on pace to break 2,000 receiving yards, which is something we have never seen before. Christian Gonzalez held him to 40 and got a pick while defending him. He was easily going to be my guy for this award until he tore his labrum, ended up on the injured reserve, and he's out for the year. That's really, really soul-crushing stuff right there. But there is another corner who's playing in the place, particularly Rainey, and is making a pretty big impact, and that's Devon Witherspoon. He's playing some really good football for the Seattle Seahawks, man. It's really impressive. I know for every other choice in this little segment I've had that I've gotten really like analytical and checked about the stats and talked about how impressive their stats were. But for Devon Witherspoon, it's so much more fun to just watch how he plays. He belongs in Seattle, man. He is everything that a Seattle Seahawks defense should be. He was hard-hitting, he's fast, he gets in your face, he's hard to game-plan for because he's such a great help in the run as well. So everything about him just feels like Legion of Boom 2013-2014. He's Seahawks fans' favorite right now, and I can't blame them. I'm jumping on the Devon Witherspoon role as well. Just watching him fly around and just absolutely destroy another grown man is insane to do as a rookie. He's not playing with any breaks. He's going fast and loose, and it's so fun to watch. And he's playing effectively. He's not biting on things and getting taken advantage of for his aggressiveness. He's fast and smart with it as well, so he's not getting beat all the time. For my final award, we have the Coach of the Year award. The coach who has done the best job at turning his team around, making a difference. And it's between two guys for me right now. One of them is Dan Campbell out of Motor City, Detroit. But the other guy, and the guy I think is making a little bit of a bigger impact on his team right now, is D'Amico Ryan's first year head coach for the Houston Texans. If you look back to preseason record predictions, nobody thought the Texans were going to have a shot in hell. I think I called them a year away from being a year away, but the way that their offense is constructed, and how aggressive their defense has been, and the turnaround they've made from last year has been unforeseeably impressive. C.J. Stroud looks amazing, they hit on him. The Tank-Dow connection that he has is very, very strong and could be one of the best things that Houston has seen in years. And it's gotten to the point where you can kind of see a world where in a weak AFC South, they already beat the Jaguars once, so they'd have a tiebreaker over them, so you can kind of maybe see a way how Houston actually ends up creeping into the division and, you know, making a serious run at the playoffs here as a division winner. That would just be, like, totally impressive stuff for a team that looked so poor last year. And that's part of the reason why I'm choosing D'Amico Ryan's over Dan Campbell. Just the severity of the turnaround that they've had, because if he was ever going to win at Dan Campbell, it should have been last year, unless the Lions obviously go off and win the Super Bowl. The Lions started 1-6 last year. It was abysmal. And they turned it around, and they finished 9-8. So to have an incredible turnout like that, people were already bought into the idea of Detroit being one of the top teams in the NFC. Nobody thought that the Texans were going to be this good, where they are in the season. So that's really why I chose D'Amico Ryan's instead of Dan Campbell. Even though they're both very deserving of the award, if both of them got the award, I would be fine with it, you know? Like, who really cares about coach of the year? I just threw it in there because I like talking about D'Amico Ryan's, and I find the Texans really interesting. This leads me to the rough part of my podcast right now, and that's the fantasy football section, because if you had taken my advice this week, you wouldn't be doing super hot. And that's not a trend that has been very common so far, but looking back, Josh Jacobs, another pitiful week, I assumed with no starting quarterback, that they would just try to run the ball and dump the ball off and just force feed Josh Jacobs. That wasn't the plan. He didn't get the volume, he wasn't productive, and if we're being painfully honest, it might be time to take Josh Jacobs out of your lineup for good until he has a 20-point game. He is looking awful at the moment, man. I'm really thinking about it. I have him on one of my teams. It's rough. My second guy I told you to start was Brandon Ayuk. He didn't have a bad game. He put up 12-13 points, so Ayuk, that's a fine one by me. Pacheco, he had a good game. He put up 19. He had a nice receiving touchdown. He benefited from the Patrick Mahomes masterclass that we saw against the Chargers. DJ Moore, being down, you probably should have had him in your starting lineups, truthfully. He was really, really mediocre. He threw 15 points, which is solid. Probably not what you want out of your wide receiver one. You're probably hoping for a 20 bomb there, but 15 is nothing to scoff at. Jameer Gibbs, I told people to be wary about him. We weren't sure what was going to happen with Craig Reynolds because Detroit has repeatedly spoken good things about Craig Reynolds, but Gibbs ended up being the guy in the backfield. He got a nice touchdown run, so that really saved Jameer Gibbs that touchdown because it could have been rough without it. And then I said to sit Mike Evans because I thought Atlanta was going to get him some trouble. AJ Terrell is just not the guy anymore. I need to stop living in 2021. He hasn't been good for some time now, so it's just, it's really sad to see. Mike Evans, he went crazy. He had a 40 yard touchdown. He just keeps getting points. It was one of my bigger, like, hot takes to sit Mike Evans because I really thought that Tampa was going to struggle against Atlanta, and they did. They ended up losing, so they did struggle, but Mike Evans didn't see any drop off in fantasy football. So, I'm going to put a ban on myself from handing out fantasy advice this week. I'm not going to hurt you this week any more than I did last week if you took my advice. I'm going to come back next week. I'm going to have strong information. I'm going to be right back with it. And this is my apology to all of you fantasy football lovers out there, that next week, I'm going to get at least 75% of my guys right. And that closes out my fantasy football section, and ultimately the end of the podcast. So thank you so much. If you made it this far, it means a lot to me. Keep supporting the podcast. I'm going to leave you guys with a question. How many minor car accidents, like fender benders, how many fender benders would you get into in your car to guarantee your team a Super Bowl? Would it be three? Five? Ten? None? I don't know. Let me know. I'm going to put a little poll under, and I hope you can see it because I'm still getting the hang of Spotify, but let me know how many you would get into to guarantee your team a trip to the Super Bowl and a Super Bowl victory.