(00:00) Recap of 49ers win vs Jets
(20:42) Brock Purdy + Kyle Shanahan on RB Jordan Mason
(27:24) Christian McCaffrey DNP (calf)
(40:39) Robert Saleh on loss
(48:39) Aaron Rodgers on loss
PFT Live with Mike Florio
49ers roll to 32-19 win vs Jets on MNF
At Sling TV, we'd like to know, do you want to take your love of college football to the next level? Does a bulldog bark, and a duck quack, and a long horn, uh, moo? With Sling, you get access to hundreds of games on the biggest networks all for the best price. Go with the obvious choice, streaming the games you love, and saving on them too. That's taking your fandom to the next level. Visit Sling.com and start watching live. The college football you love, the live TV you love. Sling. You know what? After the 26-week grind, 16 gather, heroes, hopefuls, hot shots, hot heads, their demeanor may vary, their determination does not. Fortune brought them to this moment, now it's up to them. The racing you've waited for is now. The NASCAR playoffs on NBC and USA. Hey guys, hell of a job, man. All right, fun game, everybody across the board, how many runs do we get? 37 runs, guys. Hey. Awesome job, man. Hey, man. Hey, man, all work, no luck, this on the beginning. Hey, now it's all three, now it's all three, one, two, three. Got it. Week one is in the books. It's a Tuesday edition of PFT Live Tuesdays with McCordy. He is Devin McCordy. I'm Mike Florio. We're here on Peacock Series XM85, Sky Sports NFL, podcast, wherever you get them. Clips wherever you see them. Devin, good morning. How are you on the first morning after? You know, they say that football season is a marathon, not a sprint. It's actually a triathlon when you consider regular season, post season, off season. But that first week sure is how it feels like a sprint, a nonstop sprint, how you're feeling the first Tuesday, probably better than when you played, but still, baby, I'm worn out. It feels like when you play and you go on like a tough stretch. I remember there was times where we had like a Monday night game into a Sunday night game into a Thursday game and you're just like, let me get through this stretch. So we've been seeing each other a lot this past weekend, right Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, day off Saturday, they're right back at a Sunday. So I'm happy to get on a regular season schedule is what we used to call it back in football. Just getting back to the norm, right? Wednesday is a Wednesday, Thursday is a Thursday at football terms. Once your games start moving, you'll be like, today's Wednesday, but really for us, today's a Friday, it starts getting confusing. Nobody likes all of that. So just getting back to a normal schedule, I'm all for it. And we're not complaining. We're just peeling back the curtain. The past week has been a little nutty. We go from Kansas City to the charter to Connecticut. And then the ride to the hotel in Connecticut was farther than the friggin' flight from Kansas City to New Jersey and two hours of sleep into Friday and Friday night game in Brazil. Thank God we didn't have to go to Brazil. And then we had the game on Sunday and then Monday travel home. I get in the car into Pittsburgh airport and say, I'm going to sleep a little bit in the backseat here because I'm exhausted. Oh, there's another lawsuit against the Sean Watson. Well, get your computer open and get your ass to work and then you get home and it's like, I'm going to take a nap, 15 minutes later, the GD phone rings, ah, there goes the nap. And oh, the game's starting. And that part was great. The best part was having the opportunity to sit down and watch the game and focus on a game now. The game left a little something to be desired because one team's front seven got its ass kicked all over the place, but it was nice for the world to settle down to be able to watch a game last night. I told my kids, I was like eight o'clock between eight and eight 15. You will be in the bed because I'm done to my wife too. I said, I'm done. So if you need my help, you need to be on my schedule right now because these kids need to go to sleep. Cause I was just saying, wait with you. I got back, I got back early Friday morning. I was like, you know what? I'm going to sleep in, go to sleep in kids, wake up for school. They're yelling and screaming. So I get up, take them to school. But luckily for me, I came back, got a nap, woke up, watched a Kansas city and Baltimore game back so I could just understand what happened in the game. Then we'll feel like we were in a studio forever. But now all that's gone, we're back to regular Monday and Jets fans, I'm sorry. This phrase keeps coming up. The Jets just going to jet. And last night just felt like the Jets, just jetting a game where you felt like, Hey, this is their best chance, right? Trent Williams missed all training camp on you was going to be rusty. Christian McCaffrey didn't even play. He was inactive and I agree with you, Florio. That was my biggest takeaway, the strength of the Jets just got dismantled. The 49er said, Hey, we're going to run. There were open lanes all over the field of Jets as Bill Bell, which I used to say in our meetings, defensive line, just because the offensive line is running sideways with their zone block and we cannot run sideways with them. We have to get up the field, penetrate, get off blocks, make tackles. And I mean, Mason was into the second very so often last night, just the loss was one thing. But the way they lost, I thought was surprising because San Fran attacked the Jets biggest strength, which is their front seven. And obviously their secondary is pretty good too, but their front seven is a strength and they just got killed all game. Yeah, Devin, it was the defense last year that helped the Jets avoid a complete and total disaster of a season once they went into quarterback carousel mode and their offense couldn't do Jack Diddley squat. So it's a very simple analysis, which qualifies me to engage in it. We still have a great defense. Aaron Rodgers is back. This is going to be better team is going to be better last night's outcome. The offense really didn't get a chance to get into a rhythm at that one really nice drive that made me think maybe maybe the Jets showed up to play tonight. But when you just can't stop a rushing attack, Kyle Shanahan, you saw that in the clip at the beginning, 37 attempts, 28 by Jordan Mason, undrafted in 2022 out of Georgia Tech pressed into service. I will find a spot in this segment to speak my mind about how that all played out as well. But the most rushing attempts since Kyle Shanahan became the head coach and every once in a while, you will see the folks who are smarter than everyone else spout off stats about well, when so and so carries the ball X numbers of times and when you rush for this many yards, your record is this it's easy to win when you're able to run that much. You can't just come out and say, we're going to run the ball 37 times because if you're running into a brick wall, you're not going to be able to run the ball 37 times. You only run it that many times because it is successful and you keep doing it. I think the Jets wanted to run that many times. You look the men and carries they gave Breeze Hall, they weren't getting any yards and Flora, you hit it right on the head. You look the 49ers dominate the game because they had the ball all game. The Jets offense, that third drive of the game that you spoke about, they were able to move the ball. They still couldn't really run the ball that well, but Breeze Hall, I think he got one carry I had some yardage, he had a catch that, he got some yards and then it was all Garrett Wilson all the way down the field and that is what we thought the formula would be. Play good defense, get the ball, let Aaron Rodgers run the ball, control it. You thought I saw one of the best moments of why you have Aaron Rodgers as your quarterback. He gets them in New England, we used to call this Green Bay strictly because Aaron Rodgers, he gets the 49ers to jump off sides, gets the ball better than any other quarterback. He doesn't throw the ball five yards over a guy's head, it's a free play. So what do you do? He looks one way and he knows he's going to come back and fire the ball inside and they score a touchdown to Lazard, but you're like, that's what we want to see all game. But I still think for this team, it has to be about their defense and I think one of the takeaways can't be well, they played a good 49ers team. So this is understandable. Not where the Jets want to be this year. If you want to be a real deal contender, you want to play with the best teams, the Baltimore as a Kansas City's, supposedly the Bengals, you want to play with those teams. You got to come out and play your best football against the best teams in the NFL because that's your time. That's your chance to show it. And last night to me was very disappointing other than that third drive. The only the best other drive was when Tyrod Taylor came in at the end of the game, which he drove them down a field and scored a touchdown, but it was a little too late at that point. Alan Lazard ends up with two touchdown catches, one from Rogers, one from Taylor at the end. Lazard, who was basically MIA last year after Rogers wasn't there to continue that relationship that resulted in the Jets bringing him in. Final score 32-19, that's a score agami, by the way, for those of you who score at home on score agami, 31-19 was the final score of Super Bowl 14, 32-19 was the final score last night. It's never in NFL history. It's the 1,085th unique score since the NFL has been around, so 32-19, cross it off. It's happened now. It took 105 years and one week to get to 32-19. I thought it would be closer, Devin. I thought what would happen last night, Jets would acquit themselves well. They would feel like we can play with the 49ers. The 49ers would eat out a win and the Jets would be propelled into this stretch they have the first half of the season where they have not one but two Sunday to Thursday turn around, including next. They go home, then they go to Tennessee, then they come home, then here come the Patriots on Thursday night, between the ninth and the 19th, they will play three games. How do you process getting your ass kicked physically last night with the next train is already on the tracks? How do you do that when you know you've got to play so much to start the season? How do you put behind you as a defense how things went last night? Sometimes the best thing is that there is another train on the track. You don't have time to sit there and wonder what went wrong. You don't have that and it's not like a long time whenever people talk about this. It's just one day when you play on Sunday and you come in Monday, you're going to work out, you're going to get a quick little run-in or maybe get in a pool, whatever teams decide to do. Then for the rest of that Monday, it's digging deep into the film. It's going through what went wrong, why it's first sitting down with your head coach probably in a longer meeting, then it's splitting up, offense, defense. Then it's splitting up again into individual meetings and you just have to hear over and over again the same kind of things of what you messed up. When you play on a Monday night, we don't have time. You're going to be off today and then Wednesday, it's time to start talking about the time of Titans. It's starting to move on and the wing was sometimes, depending on how the game went, Bill would have a quick maybe 25-minute meeting in the morning to pick up where we left off, review the game real quick and kind of close the book on it. Sometimes if the game was this poorly played, he's already circled after that Thursday night game against the Jets. That's going to be the time we go back over this game and we dig deep into it. For this team, I think it's going to be good for them to acknowledge what happened. I'm sure Salah will speak about it when he comes in Wednesday morning, but they won't have time to really the low lights get ripped in film session. You don't have time for that. You move on to Tennessee and I think for this team, you still should have the same goals and things that you had circled up in what you want to do in the season. Here's a time now to go on the road, go play Tennessee and then to have an opportunity to come back and play against, we'll see how it goes against Seattle this week for a new wing win, but this could be a team who at one point was going to be the worst team and they've always been a division foe that you have to play. But now they might come in either one and one or two and oh, coming off two really good weeks. So it'll be a challenge. I think these next two weeks would adjust, but they have the veteran leadership where this shouldn't be an issue that this should kind of evolve into a four week, five week thing for them. They should be able to kind of flip the page and move on and play football. At Sling TV, we'd like to know, do you want to take your level college football to the next level, does a bulldog bark and a duck quack and a long horn, a moo? With Sling, you get access to hundreds of games on the biggest networks all for the best price. Go with the obvious choice, streaming the games you love and saving on them too. That's taking your fandom to the next level. Visit Sling.com and start watching live. The college football you love, the live TV you love, Sling. After the 26 week grind, 16 gather, heroes, hopfolds, hot shots, hot heads, their demeanor may vary, their determination does not. Fortune brought them to this moment, now it's up to them, the racing you've waited for. It's now the NASCAR playoffs on NBC and USA. Long flight home from San Francisco across the country to have to think about it, deal with it and try to hit a hard reset button so you can get ready for the fact that in five days there'll be a Nashville taking on the Titans as a game like last night was unfolding. Not that this happened very often to your New England Patriots, but when it's just not working defensively and I've been at games where you're close enough to the sideline and guys come off the field throwing their helmets down, you know, what the F is going on out there and you have, you know, limited opportunities to try to get things righted and you just can't no matter what you do, what do you do during to try to change what's happening when a team is just cramming it down your throat over and over again? Well, you go back to 2021 season, we go up to Buffalo in the playoffs and first time in NFL history where a team scored on every possession that they had the ball ball, so you're talking about things not working. And I think the hard thing about that is when that happens, your defensive coordinator, whoever it is, they go and they play zone, they go and play man, then they blitz. When you're, when you can't stop anything, you just say, you know what, let's throw out the whole playbook. Let's give them everything we got. So I think as a player, you need usually somebody or a couple of guys who are, hey, guys, it's not about the calls, it's not about anything else other than we need to step up and start playing better football. We need to be tougher when, and like you watch the game, some of those running plays. It wasn't about anything schematically. It was just somebody had to say, hey, I'm going to make a play. And I thought Mason did an unbelievable job as the game got going on. He just kept running harder and harder. He was getting like, you can see these plays. He straight into the secondary and then once he got in the secondary, he was making sure guys were willing to say, you know what, I'm going to come up and tackle this guy because he's running through tackles and it goes back to again and the defensive line, you can't just take on your blocker and think, hey, I'm going to run it back or I'm going to stay on him because the whole start to open up. And I have to say that is probably the best thing about watching San Francisco is they play a style and, you know, Troy ain't going to talk about it on a call talking to Kyle Shanahan. He's not really in to invest in top money into a bunch of offensive line. He said, I want to invest in guys who can run and score with the football. And that's what it looked like. This offensive line did a really good job. He said, you get the guys that fit together, they go out there and play. But then it's the guys with the ball in our hands. And I thought it was another opportunity for us to see how special Deebo Samuel is. And I know Mason got a ton of carries and did a great job of going out there and taking advantage of his opportunity as a late round pick. The Deebo Samuel without Christian McCaffrey was that had the ability to catch the ball, run the ball. He just does everything for this team and since adding Christian McCaffrey, I think we saw what Christian McCaffrey is and how he really dominates it. But when they lose him, Deebo Samuel just comes in and fulfills all those different roles like it's not that it's really special to watch Deebo do those things. Jordan Mason in 2022 had 43 carries for the entire season and he averaged 6.0 yards per attempt. 2023, he had 40 carries for the entire season, average 5.2. Last night he had 28 carries in one game and average 5.3. This gets back to the Mike Shanahan approach. I remember this, Devin, back when you were like 10 or 11 years old when Mike Shanahan was coaching the Broncos and Terrell Davis went down with an ACL in the 1999 season after they'd won two Super Bowls in a row and they're trying to figure out what they're going to be post John Elway. All of a sudden, here comes Orlando Scary, 1,000 yards. Here comes Mike Anderson, 1,000 yards and this is what's been weird about the 49ers because they've embraced Christian McCaffrey, they've paid Christian McCaffrey. That defies what they've done because their attitude has always been, we got somebody else. If this guy has hurt, if this guy wants to leave, if we trade him, whatever, we got somebody else. Clinton Portis traded by the Denver Broncos to Washington. We got some, we're fine, we're fine because we have a system, there's so many running backs out there that can run the ball. So if you can trust him to hold onto it, you block for him, you trust him and blitz pick up, there's so many guys that can do it. And what Jordan Mason did last night, making $985,000 this year, yeah, Christian McCaffrey, like it's, it's a strange wrinkle for a team that is spread so thin financially. They got a lot invested at running back and last night's game as a reminder that they probably don't need to. So the interesting thing to me is we look at, I think, look at the Green Bay Packers, look at the Baltimore Ravens. They have these backs, you look at Derrick Henry, look at Josh Jacobs. They're two special kind of running backs at how they run the ball. But I think as a defense, you have a very strong mentality to say which back is in the game. And I thought the Baltimore game, we really saw it of when Derrick Henry was in, compared to when Justice Hill was in, it just felt like a totally different offense. And the defense, they are into it and they have a beat on it. So they talk about that. I remember being at Huddles and we would be saying to who's in the game, which backs in the game and understanding that. And once they go to play, the call sheet differs, Christian McCaffrey, Sequon Barkley, those are two different types of backs where they're always in the game. And when they're in the game, not much changes in what they can do. They can split out why they can run a wheel route. They can run routes that receivers runs. And when you have that, it's hard to match up. You don't always have a linebacker who can go out there and cover Christian McCaffrey or Sequon Barkley. You don't always have the guys up front who can take on the maybe too tight end run blocking, run scheme that allowed these guys to run the ball in between the tackles and run outside. So I think having those guys, it just changes things up as a defense, you understand, hey, these guys are unbelievable players. We have to come every single play, shoot, we got to tell each other when they leave the game because now it comes back down a little bit because of their ability to do so many different things on the field. I think for San Francisco, the unique thing is when Christian McCaffrey's not there, they also have a guy in Deebo Samuel, when he's on the field, you have to know where he's lining up, which I think creates a difference. But I understand why those two guys get paid at running back because they're, they just can do things that I don't think many other running backs can do. I think Breeze Hall is a guy that has a little combination, but you even see the difference in how he can run Ross compared to Christian McCaffrey and Sequon Barkley. But when you have the offensive line, when you have the play calling and play designing genius of Kyle Shanahan, you can pluck Jordan Mason off the bench and look, I maybe he's special too. Maybe if given an opportunity weekend and week out, if he could physically hold up, one of the things he said to Lisa Salders of ESPN last night was I said to Christian, I don't know how the hell you do it. I don't know how you do it. You know, it hurts to get hit that many times as you're the battering wrap, 28 carries in a game, but it's amazing to see with McCaffrey out because it all happened so quickly. The news came that he was inactive. Nobody saw it coming in again. At some point, I'm going to take a little step on to my soapbox, the same soapbox I stand on when I'm on the one you were standing on the other night when you were caught between the redwoods of Maria Taylor and Chris Simms, but, but it all happened so quickly like there was this vibe. Hey, maybe the Jets can pull this off. No Christian McCaffrey offensive player of the year last year. You take him out of the mix and everything that he does. Maybe the 49ers can be had, Brandon Iyuk wasn't practicing until recently Trent Williams held out. Maybe, maybe, I'm a Jets defense Aaron Rodgers is back. Maybe the 49ers are vulnerable. It's probably one of the reasons why they kept it under wraps because they knew that if the Jets had a full and complete chance to think about this and plan and react, maybe, maybe they would be able to take down the 49ers, but it ultimately doesn't matter when you're getting your ass kicked up front. I could have been, well, not me. You could have been playing running back. You had that great running back number of 32. You could have been back there carrying a ball even though you played defense for your career and you would have been able to move the chains with what the 49ers were doing. But the praise went to Jordan Mason who had the huge night last night. Here's some of the 49ers talking about what the third year undrafted player from Georgia Tech got done against the Jets. Coming in rookie year trying to learn the playbook together, he and I would meet a lot and go through everything. He's always had that drive to learn and knowing that we were guys that I was the last pick and he was undrafted and knowing that we weren't going to have a lot of opportunities and we had to make the most of the opportunities that we got. He knew that. And so to see him over the last two years, you know, just push the envelope more and more every year and then get an op this year at camp and do well with it. And obviously in the first game this season, he's great with it. So really, really excited for him. He's earned it, man. He's the kind of guy that was not given to him. And so to see him go out and do what he did tonight, man, I'm so happy for him and I know he's going to keep pushing. I thought he runs like he always does. I mean, when you get him the ball, he breaks tackles, usually gets more than we block than we block for. When we had the good lanes, he always hit him and got a bunch. But JP was awesome today. Brock Purdy on his way to teach social studies, stopping by the press conference. And it's funny to me that the range that we see of what quarterbacks wear two games, what they wear after games, but yeah, Mr. Purdy, we're here for class. At least he looks old enough, finally, after a few years to be the teacher, not one of the students. Right? At least he made that transition, you know, but you know, and some of the stats that come up Devin in the aftermath of games are amazing to me. Matt Casey sent this on our thread last night, this new thread that you're on that I haven't muted yet because my phone dinged at like 3 a.m. But and thanks. Thanks, Matt. Thanks a lot, Matt. Some of us don't have kids that wake up in the middle of the night. But the 49ers and again, how does anybody even think of this? The 49ers are the only NFL team in the Super Bowl era to get a 200 yard passing game, Brock Purdy, 125 yard Russian game, Jordan Mason, 50 yard receiving game, Joanne Jennings, and an interception for Flanagan Falls from four players who were drafted 200th or later or not drafted at all. That's a testament to what the 49ers have done under Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch. They find guys well beyond the point at which anyone gives a crap about who's being drafted because we don't know which one of those guys are going to pan out. All that guy. That's nice. Good for him. He's been drafted. Let's see what he does in the NFL. The 49ers have a hell of a collection of guys who fall into that category of let's see what they do who come in and get it done. And I love that because I think right away when we hear a guy is a late round pick or he's undrafted right away, people are like, oh, that's all about development and coaching. But it's also a reminder that the draft happens on where people think the value is in a player. It doesn't always mean if a guy is a good football player, they have the scouting combine. They have the all-star games and all that. Everyone goes and they look at a guy and they say, hey, this guy is, he's not fast enough. He's not tall enough. All of those things, but they'll say, but I think he'll get a shot in the NFL. And that's when you really can tell when the guys get real opportunities and I think the best teams and football do an awesome job at saying, okay, these are our draft picks. This is where we value guys. This is where we're going to go select them. But here's a column of guys that might be undrafted or they'll be available late into the seventh round. Here's where we can get guys that fit our scheme, fit our system. You look at Mason. I'm showing a Washington College and they said in college, you didn't even have a game where you got the ball 28 times. So shout out to their scouts who even gave this guy an opportunity to come in because he didn't even get to show this in college, fully going and carrying a ball over and over and over and down a defense. But I'm sure they went to watch and said, hey, this guy runs pretty hard. Hey, he looks like in our scheme when we're zoned blocking, he'll be able to hit gaps, find the right gaps. As Shannon has said, even when there's not much there, he gets yards. But when there is there, he finds the gap every single time. It reminds me of Andy Reid and Veach down in Kansas City where they talked about Isaiah Pacheco and they watched him out of Rutgers and they said, wow, like this guy's getting some yards and the offensive line is not really blocking anybody. Imagine what he can do if we put him behind our offensive line and get him in our system. And I think that's the value in having an organization that is built from the top down up. There's constant communication. There's alignment. And Garrett always talks about that every week, the right organizations, they have the right alignment. And I think when you look at San Francisco, the alignment is right. They're getting the guys, not only that the front office likes, but that Kyle Shanahan says, hey, this guy fits our system. We can put him in there and he can play for us. And think about how hard that is to look beyond the superficial, obvious football statistics. And for a running back, your statistics are the bread and butter, Jordan Mason hadn't had 28 rushing attempts in a game since high school at Gallatin High in Tennessee for crying out loud. And I'm looking at his Georgia Tech numbers. His last year at Georgia Tech, he had 87 rushing attempts in 12 games for 439 yards. Well, you know, and that just tells you what goes into set that aside because sometimes colleges don't use it either way they should. They don't realize they have somebody who's special. And this guy was third team all ACC in 2019. I didn't even know ACC had a third team. Like at what point do you just say, let's just call it honorable mention and move on. Third team all ACC, that's the most he'd ever done. That just shows you how special last night was. And the 49ers saw it, they knew it, and they believed and he got the chance that he delivered. That's what makes it even more amazing. Christian McCaffrey better get healthy. That's the one thing about this week. When you're on a sideline and other guys are playing, it allows coaches for an office to say, oh, we thought like we believed in them, but he might be a little bit better than we thought. You look at Drew Bledso who has made an unbelievable comeback of telling these stories and different things about Brady, but he gets hurt Brady comes in and just like that, that opportunity on that team, $100 million contract is gone. You don't want to sit on a sideline too long. So I'll expect to see Christian McCaffrey sooner rather than later coming back for that 49ers team. Let's go there because I've been waiting for my little rant about how last night was handled. And this isn't a criticism of the 49ers as much as it is an indictment of the NFL's injury reporting system. And in an age of legalized gambling, where you can bet to win straight up money line, you can bet with the spread, you can do over unders, and you can do that whole universe of prop bets, Christian McCaffrey over under 78 and a half rushing yards, 0.5 touchdowns, all those different little permutations where they'll take your money. They'll take your money on anything you want to bet on because the house is going to win over time. They know that that's why it's so popular. The house is going to win. Give us your money. If they were going to lose, they wouldn't even be in the business or in the business because they win and they make money. That's how it works. So the way that this is allowed to happen, Christian McCaffrey's got the calf injury that we knew about. And then I should have, this is where my spidey sense should have taken over on Thursday last week when we're scurrying around to get ready for the the Chiefs Ravens game while also dodging lightning bolts at Arrowhead Stadium. When it comes out that McCaffrey has calf and Achilles, that was the first red flag. Well, it's the same general area, Achilles, Achilles can be a little bit of a problem as we learned last year on the opening Monday night of the season. So he's limited on Thursday. He's limited on Friday. He's limited on Saturday because for the Monday night game, you get the final injury report on Saturday and they apply the questionable label. How everybody's questionable? Nope. How rare is it that someone's doubtful and when they're doubtful, they might as well be out. Like, they should have at least put doubtful on McCaffrey because after the game last night, at least the soldiers gets Jordan Mason and says, "When did you find out you were starting?" He said Friday, Friday night, something like that. Oops. What? Whoa. Wait a minute. Friday. Wait a minute. We start another day of injury. We still haven't put the label on Christian McCaffrey. So he's told on Friday, "Get ready, you're starting." And that's what he said. That's what he said. Cal Shannan said, "I never told him that." Okay. I don't care. That's what he said. When the cat is out of the bag, I don't expect the 49ers to acknowledge it. That is what he said on national TV. I was told Friday or Friday night I was starting. And on Saturday, they put questionable on McCaffrey. Devin, that's, here's why it's a problem. In 2018, when the Supreme Court opened the floodgates for state by state legalized gambling, and if I had two choices, one, we continue to hate gambling. We continue to oppose gambling. We don't want our teams to be involved in any way, shape, or form. We encourage our fans to stay away from it. The house always wins. We shun it. No matter how many states is legal in, we shun it. Or we can make a little money off of this. We can have all these partnerships. And the one thing, Devin, that they won't talk about, how many owners exercise their prerogative to own up to 5% of a company that has a sports book operation. We know RKK's had a piece of draft Kings for a long time. We know that. It's been publicly reported. Jerry Jones, piece of draft Kings, how many owners have a piece of these companies that are the house? So the problem is, if you're going to be that embedded with gambling, you can have a system that has a bunch of people, whether you're in a four money fantasy football league and you had the first overall pick and you took Christian McCaffrey, you got prop bets on Christian McCaffrey, you can't have that turd land in the punch bowl an hour before kickoff. It can't happen that way when the team knew three days before that that guy wasn't playing. You would know better than me. Is there, can you be punished for how you put a guy, how a guy shows up on an injury reporter? Like if they find out, let's say Christian McCaffrey on Friday and Saturday, all he did was go through warmups and that's why he was limited. Can like, does that have to be reported as doubtful or are you always okay as long as you put some kind of designation that he might be out? Well, I think in a lot of these cases, Devin, they could if they really wanted to unleash the hounds of the way that some teams, I'm not going to mention any specific teams that might play at Gillette Stadium, but some teams, if they ever run slightly, well, but my point is they come after you guys for certain things that we've, you know, talked about in past years where they, they activate the full weight of the NFL investigative process on certain teams like the Patriots, but for the most part, I think they don't like to investigate. They don't like to go down rabbit holes because they don't want to have to let the world see. Yeah, we got some stuff going on that pun intended is questionable. So I think they could, I don't think they, well, I asked the league after Jordan Mason said what he said and again, Kyle Shanahan said, well, I never told him that. So hey, Kyle, somebody did. And then when Jordan Mason had his press availability, he's like, that's why I don't like talking to the media. Yeah. Oh, I might accidentally say something I shouldn't say that just so happens to be the truth. And I, I credit him for telling the truth. If that, why, why would we doubt him when he accidentally told the truth when he probably shouldn't have said Friday? So I, I think the league could, but I don't think they will because they don't want it to become a thing, they don't want us to be talking about it. They don't want more people to be talking about it. I was surprised last night in the post game coverage, they weren't making a bigger deal about this. But hey, I mean, I'm not trying to be critical here. We've got draft Kings relationship, but we're not the house like ESPN is everywhere you look at CSP and bet they're the house too. So there's a point where they're going to stop. They're not going to, they're not going to shine too much of a light on what happened. But I, I, that's the first one, because the whole time I'm thinking they knew McCaffrey wasn't playing. They, they, they kept it under wraps. They knew he wasn't playing. They got Jordan Mason ready and the Jets had no idea until the rest of us did. And that's a real strategic advantage. But the whole time I'm thinking they knew, they knew. And when that came out of Jordan Mason's mouth, it's like, yeah, they, they knew and they kept it quiet. And it's all fair in the confines of trying to win the game. Because of all these tentacles and connections to gambling, that's where I think a greater obligation arises to let the rest of the world know what's going on. And that's where I always like, whenever I see these things, I'll read one of your articles or something like that. I'm like, who cares? Because being a player, I'm thinking about, Hey, there's always a guy going through something and we get the backup ready and the backup's ready to go. And maybe the Friday or Saturday practice, the backup gets more of the first team reps because now it seems like Chris McCaffrey can't go. So Mason's getting more run. To me, that's normal now on the other side, I'm sitting there waiting for my daughter last night to finish cheer practice and me and my oldest son, we're sitting out there watching the third graders tackle football practice. And the guy next to me gets on the phone. He was like, Chris McCaffrey is inactive. I was like, Chris McCaffrey is an active. They would have like, I would have saw that come up, but he was doubtful or something. And I go on my phone. He's inactive. The guy in my fantasy league, he's playing against somebody who has Chris McCaffrey. He drops a player and he picks up Mason, just to sit him on the bench to make sure that he can't get him. And like, as soon as that happens, it transmiles so fast. My other friend got in a group chat and said, man, I was, I took a nap. I come back and Chris McCaffrey is inactive. And I see the impact of that. And I'm still the guy who has a former player. I'm like, it's all about the game, but you have to understand the business and the element of that, of how much money is lost by so many different people when it comes to these things. So I think it is important to just pay attention to him and see how it works out in our eye group, which I don't think the league digs too deep into this because I think what happened to San Francisco is a very normal thing, a guy's questionable. We're just doing our job as a team to make sure somebody's ready. We might have told him on Friday shoot. We might have told him on Thursday, but it doesn't mean that we didn't hope Chris McCaffrey came back and would be able to start her. And we thought he would start, a Chris McCaffrey would still play, like all of those things come up in meetings or discuss. So I do think the way that the 49ers did it, if I was a coach, I would handle it the same way, but I understand how that impacts so many other things. First of all, who cares is a very common reaction to most of the stuff we write, which is still better than don't waste your time reading that crap, which Aaron Rodgers said eight years ago, but it's the system that allows it. That's what my concern is. The NFL has created and maintained a system that allows that kind of game and ship. It's rewards it. That's why the Patriots would have 40 guys question. But I remember some of those injury reports like everybody's questionable all those years before you were in New England, Tom Brady, right shoulder probable back when probable was one of the designations because they saw him walking around in the locker room with ice on his shoulder after throwing 40 passes in a game. Hey, what's wrong with his shoulder? Why isn't he on the injury reports? It's like script. Let's just put him on every single week. And if that's what you want, we'll put him on every single week is probable with a right shoulder. So yeah, from the perspective of all the different people out there who are affected by this because of the fact that the NFL went straight into bed with gambling. If they had said we want nothing to do with it, none of our owners can hold a piece of a sports book company. We will take no gambling money. We are going to completely and totally distance ourselves from it. That's different. But when you make it one of your major revenue streams and you let the owners own up to 5% of the house, that's where it becomes a problem. And hey, Devin, here's one of the reasons why I was pointing this out. We're just one scandal away from Congress going up. Everyone's asked with a microscope, pardon the expression to find out what happened and who did this and who did that. And maybe we need an agency that has oversight and I found nobody wants that. They got to take care of their backyard or somebody else is going to take care of it for them. And I keep waiting because I know it's coming. There's going to be some major like Tim Donahy style thing that calls into question the integrity of everything. And that's why when something like this happens, we can't just ignore it. We got to say, hey, we got to clean this up because I'm sure there were a lot of people last night who like Christian McCaffrey and all your other players have played. Who are you going to drop to get Jordan Mason? You going to drop Christian McCaffrey to get Jordan Mason? I don't think so. Yeah. It's so true. And argues, I think that is the biggest thing. It's an issue. Let the minds that come together, come together and find a way to correct this to make it right and explain it to everyone. I bet you they bring all the owners and then they say, this is why it's important. That will come down to the head coaches and to the team right away because again, those players almost, they don't see the 5% in draft teams. And like they don't see that revenue share that like, yes, it comes back overall into the bigger pot. But the owners who are in there, like that is their investments. That's the things that they're into that they get to do. So again, I think most of the time, all of this stuff starts at the top. You go in there, start at the top. It will always trickle down to everybody else because when the bottom line gets impacted, you're going to make sure your employees because at the end of the day, that's all everybody else's in all of those facilities, their employees to the owners of these teams, they will make sure they all on the right path. They will make sure they do it right because if not, they get fined or the issue comes to the owner and to the organization, not to the coach or to the player. Hey, Devin, I may need to get a little refresher on the rules here, but I'm 99.9% sure. Players can't buy any shares in draft kings or fandals, parent, company, flutter. You can't hold stock. You can't have ownership equity. You can't, you know, you see LeBron James doing NFL betting commercials because the players can't. You're at the Super Bowl, the 49ers and the Chiefs. You can't stop. You have to like walk like I did from the wrong spot to the right spot the other night when you're in a casino. Get right through there. You can't stop. Don't pause. I mean, so all the rules that apply to the players and oh, the owners can own up to 5%. Can I ask the league last year, well, can we get a list of which owners own which, oh, no, no comment, no comment, no comment, yeah, they don't want us talking about it because they don't want people to realize there's a problem here because the obligation, and this is the last thing I'm going to say about it, the obligation for the league to get their shit together on this is enhanced when owners are allowed to be the house. That's the fundamental problem. And if they're not going to tell us which owners own a piece of the house, that makes it all seem even more shady, frankly, somebody's going to get a phone call today, and it's probably going to be me shady and just it's just there's something about it that doesn't sit well. All right. Now, as it relates to the game, whether it's Christian McCaffrey, Jordan Mason, Devin McCordy, Mike Florio, or the guy that was selling hot dogs last night, it didn't matter who was running the ball because they kicked the crap out of the jets. It doesn't matter what the Jets knew or didn't know because it was going to be the same outcome because they pushed them all over the place. Here's Robert Salah after the game on the difference between the Jets and the 49ers last night. You know, they're very, very good up front. And from an efficiency standpoint, they beat us up front, plain and simple, very efficient on their end in terms of getting rid of the ball pretty quick. Never really gave us a chance. There's a lot of third and short, third and four, third and five, and third and twos. And so we never really got an opportunity to get after the passer and the opportunities that we did get a chance to get after the passer. They did a good job being efficient and hitting his back foot and give rid of the football. So credit to them. I thought they executed very well today. I feel like offensively we did a lot of really nice things. We did. You know, especially for Aaron on his first game back, we'll definitely be better. Yeah, look, the good news is Aaron Rogers got through the game for the most part. I mean, there were moments where it was the old Aaron Rogers, the off side, the old green bay thing. Like you said earlier, finds his heart for the touchdown. But I don't know whether he looked a little old or whether he looked a little rusty. I'm going to say he looked a little rusty. And why wouldn't he? He played four snaps of meaningful football since January of 2023 until he was thrown into it last night and everything happened so fast for you. You come back from when you've got to get over the hurdle first of am I going to get hurt again? I don't care who you are. I don't care what you've done. It's still a little bit in the back of your mind and a little anxiety of all right, I'm back out here. I'm sure for him psychologically, let's get through the first three or four plays of the game. Last year, I couldn't do that with so much buildup. Now I'm back in California, so whole 49ers thing where they could have drafted him instead of Alex Smith, all of those other things are all in his mind. And then eventually you get into the groove of the game. And then it's a reminder of when I haven't been into the groove of a game since 2022, that season. So, and then it's not like that season extended deep into the postseason. So it had been such a long time before he just got, was able to go out there and play a full game and dig into a game and think about what happened on the last third down. What blitz package did they come with? What coverage? All of those things when you're trying to get over to other things, they become a second thought. But you see that back shoulder pass again, Wilson right there. That was on that third drive. That was the Aaron Rodgers that we know hits his back foot, drifting back a little bit far as the ball in there. So he still has that ability. I think the biggest thing is this defense has a play a style that gets him the ball on his hands and that offense as many times as possible. Think about pointing back with Tom Brady. You knew the best way to get Brady in a rhythm, get turnovers, get three and outs, get the ball back to the offense because eventually if they keep getting the opportunity, they're going to find something that works and then it's going to take off. My fear right now of watching that offense was, it was just way too many. Breeze Hall, Garrett Wilson, Breeze, Breeze, all right, Wilson, Wilson, Wilson, they have to expand more. They have to get other guys involved. Lazard, I know, ends up with two touchdowns. When you look at the stat sheet, you're like, okay, Lazard had a pretty good game. But early in the game, they throw it to him on the third down on the second drive. He drops the ball and then for a stretch, Aaron Rodgers was throwing the ball exclusively to Hall or to Wilson. It felt like over and over again. So I think they want to open that up a little bit. And I think that Daniel Hack is going to have to do a good job with Aaron Rodgers coming together and just having a plan of how to get other guys involved. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if it's Gibson, maybe short passes, bubble screens, just trying to find ways. And I thought even Braylon Allen getting in at the end of the game, the way he ran the ball, maybe it's an opportunity to get him in there, maybe something, two back sets. They're going to have to just do more because again, some of these better defenses, it's not going to be hard to just zero around on two guys and take them away and make you force the foreshoot or throw the ball off or hand the ball off to other guys. By the way, Braylon Allen, youngest player in the Super Bowl era to get a touch in an NFL game last night when he got it. 20 years old. Let me ask you this because I feel like when your defense is getting manhandled the way the Jets got manhandled last night, I can only assume it puts even greater pressure on the offense to make something happen. Like if we're going to give up three or seven every drive and if the defense is going to keep us on the sidelines, waiting and waiting to get back in, it has to increase that urgency, which might cause some members of the offense to press a little bit and that snowball just keeps rolling downhill. Of course, the pressure of the one as an offense, you feel how long you've sat on the sideline and then you get out there and you know, whether it was like the Breeze Hall fumble or it was a three and out or something like that and you feel like we're right back here. Then the defense takes the field and it's another 10, 12, 13 play drive. The next time you get on the field, it's that kind of pressure of we need to score. We need to either score touchdown fast or we need to have a long drive. That for one, gives us an opportunity to stay on the field, but secondly, our defense needs some rest. Because game of the season, nobody's played a whole game throughout the whole preseason. Guys are not used to being out there going rep, rep, snap, snap after snap. So you look at all of that, it was just the formula for really bad football. You just don't want to play a game that way. I think especially the Jets, some teams have an explosive offense where like a Kansas city, when you play, sometimes the time of possession looks a little off, it's because they got the ball on a Miami Dolphins, they got the ball and within three plays, Tyreke Hill catches an over route, runs by everybody and scores a touchdown. So you don't get to see it, but you see the production with points. That's also when it comes down, like you can't score if you don't have the ball for a lot of teams in this league. And I think for the Jets, you have to find a way, I think for one offensively, you have to continue to believe in this defense. This defense has gotten you all the way here. They play well through some of the worst parts of your offense. You got to keep believing in them and then they have to step up and do their part to have a chance against Tennessee, coming off Tennessee a game where they really dominate and probably should have beat the Bears, but turnovers changed that game. I think the defense should be kind of licking their chops, coming off a tough game of saying, all right, this is a game against a good offense and a team that played pretty well last week that we can get back in our group, maybe get some turnovers, play good run defense and kind of show what we can do. But I think offensively, you got to believe in that and you need it to come back in this second game. Like, we need to see it actually happening to believe in it. You can't just say, hey, we're going to blindly trust it's going to happen and the NFL doesn't work like that. You got to go execute, getting it done, and then guys are believing it. But I don't want to say this, I must win for the Jets, but I think this is a game. You go to Tennessee, you don't want to lose a Tennessee and then come back, I have to play the Patriots on a short week, who when you look at the way they went to Cincinnati, they're on a mission to prove everybody wrong up. You think we're just this worst roster in NFL and we're so bad. Those guys are going to play to prove, hey, Jarrod Mayo is the coach here. We wanted him to be our coach and we're going to prove that he is a really good coach and it looked like that in week one against Cincinnati. Again, it was four snaps last September for Aaron Rodgers. That's the only football we had seen from him since he lost his Lambo field finale, find a week of the 2022 season to the Lions to miss the playoffs. Here's Rodgers after playing his first full game with the New York Jets talking about his team's offense. I feel like we didn't have any third and 10 pluses tonight, so that's always a good thing. We look in the stat sheet, but we didn't convert those certain mediums. We had a drop, we had a couple penalties at a bad throw, so not the correct, but overall I feel good about our guys, that the protection was really good tonight. We just were a little bit off in the run game, couldn't get Reese Cohen, couldn't give him enough space. But a lot to build on. We expect greatness when we step on the field. There were moments for sure, the moments that felt really good, but not sustained. I felt like we'd just get a first down, we'd be rolling, and then we had those three and outs, which really hurt us, but I think a lot of stuff's correctable, which is great for coaches. It's frustrating for players because we know how close we were/are, but no time for that. We're going to move on to Tennessee quickly, and then we got a game four days after that. This is a tough opener for us, travel-wise and schedule-wise, but no excuses. We've got to play better, I've got to play better, and we'll bounce back next month. Unless he plays for a different team next year that plays at San Francisco, that was his final career game in that stadium. I guess he could be back there if they make it to the Super Bowl next year too, whoever he plays for, jets or someone else, but he's processing, I think, the finality. He spent a lot of time thinking about it and talking about it last year, but as it relates to coming back to his home area, the team he desperately wanted to play for, the team that passed on him and went with Alex Smith, that was his last chance, and there was kind of a sense maybe he had a little something for the 49ers, but when the best thing you can say about the offense is we didn't have many third and longer than tens, that's really stretching for a silver lining, Devin. But the answer is that there were six of 10 on third down, there were 60 percent. As a defense, you usually say, if we can keep a team at 25 to 30 percent, we feel pretty good defensively. They were at 60 percent, they just, they didn't get enough, they didn't get enough possessions, they didn't get enough plays on offense to feel good, and then you put that with the two turnovers they had, that really lets you know, yeah, the defense played poorly and then the two turnovers, like you can't turn the ball over, especially against the 49ers, that team is too good to turn the ball over against. But I do, I agree with them, there were some good things that they're going to be able to watch it and see like, hey, we can, like, we can do this, let's go and do this better, let's do that. But, you know, if I'm them, the biggest thing I take away is, hey, if we get in third down, we should be pretty comfortable that we can go and convert third downs. If we play that way, we just need to get the ball back more, but I do think it's interesting when, I remember talking to him back in 2022, we lost in Green Bay and coming on the field and I was like, man, it's been a lot of fun playing against you in your career. You're obviously a great player, probably the last time I get opportunity to play against you. And I think for Aaron Rodgers, you're at that age where you do think about those things. You're not thinking about it as much coming into the game, but as that game starts to wrap up and you saw Tyrod Taylor came in for him and you're on the sideline, you do start to think about, man, whatever I wanted to accomplish here, playing in my home state and being here and, you know, all of those things, that might not ever happen again. And I know a lot of people are like, well, he's already accomplished a lot, he's going into Hall of Fame, he's won a Super Bowl, but there's certain things for us as players that we just enjoy getting the opportunity to do. My last year playing against the Jets, I had two interceptions, I played my high school football in New Jersey, I played college football in New Jersey. That opportunity to me was so special of being able to do that and perform at my home state and going and doing what I love to do. Well, I'm sure for Aaron Rodgers, it's not the end of the season, it's not the end all be all. But those are little things along this journey that you have in your sights and you want to do. So I agree with you of him being in that press conference and starting to actually kind of think of those kind of special moments that you're going to start to lose as the season goes on and you might not get another opportunity to do because you get to that age where the football season and what happens next season isn't only determined by you, it starts to be determined by your play, how you look out there, all of those things start to come in because for a good portion of our careers as players, especially if you're a great player like Aaron Rodgers, a pretty good player like me, is you know for a while I'll be back. I'll get to do that again, barring an injury, you know, but then you start to get to that latter part where he's like, I don't know if the team's going to feel quite the way that I feel about me coming back. So I definitely think he's starting to process those things and it makes it harder each time you don't perform the way you want to perform. Yeah, you rarely see a Joe Flacco who will hang around on second or third spot on a depth chart as long as he came once the window closes on most franchise quarterbacks for starting. That's when they walk away and usually they walk away before that window has completely closed and with Rodgers, he said another year or two and I think a second year in New York is going to hinge largely on what they're able to accomplish this year and if he plays somewhere else next year, it may, it would be somewhere else, not for the New York Jets. All right, well week one is done, the challenge for all teams, if you lost, process it and move on, if you won, don't get a big head because you could be one in one by next week at this time. Let's go ahead and take a break. We're going to circle back to the Tyree kill situation. Chris and I talked about it yesterday and one of the things that I was hopeful of is that more facts would come out, that body camera footage wouldn't be lost or the camera wasn't turned on or we're not going to get the full picture. We just want to get to the truth. We got a big chunk of the truth yesterday. We'll break it down next here on PFT Live. At Sling TV, we'd like to know, do you want to take your love of college football to the next level? Does a bulldog bark and a duck quack and a long horn, a moo? With Sling, you get access to hundreds of games on the biggest networks all for the best price. Go with the obvious choice, streaming the games you love and saving on them too. That's taking your fandom to the next level. Visit sling.com and start watching live. The college football you love, the live TV you love, Sling. (drumming)