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This episode is brought to you by Progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now, you're multitasking, but what if you could also be saving money by switching to Progressive? Drivers you save by switching save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. So multitask right now. Get your quote now at Progressive.com. Progressive cash, insurance company and affiliates national average 12 months savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary discounts not available in all states and situations. [MUSIC] By a toe, the opener is under the chase. [MUSIC] And that was how the first game of 272 and the 2024 regular season ended last night at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. The show is PFT Live, we're on peacock 06785, Sky Sports NFL, podcasts, wherever you get them, clips wherever you see them, Shireen Williams is the person you see on the right. I'm Mike Florio on the left, I am extremely sleep deprived, Gary asked me when I got here what time our flight got in last night, and I said I don't want to talk about it. And I don't want to talk about it. Good morning, Shireen. Good morning, and now you got to stay up again tonight, Mike, and watch the game. At least I don't have, yeah, at least I don't have to go more than five minutes or so from work assignment to place where I sleep. Last night it was fun, but it was something that resulted in me getting as little sleep as I've gotten in a very long time. I was explaining to someone not long ago that pulling an all-nighter for work is not a badge of honor. It is an indication that you have procrastinated because you shouldn't have to stay up all night to finish whatever project it is. You shouldn't have to stay up all night to study for that test. You shouldn't have to stay up all night because you've had time to do that thing that is due literally tomorrow. This is a different situation. This is, you're working here one day, you're working here the next day and they're not nearly as close together as here and here. So you have to travel from here to here and sometimes it takes a little time to get from there to here. So all that said, football is back and nobody cares. Nobody cares that my sleep was more like a nap and not actual sleep. Nobody cares. They care about football. As do I. So we're going to have some fun, Shireen, talking about the game that happened last night and focusing on the 15 still to come as week one unfolds with not unprecedented, but a very rare Friday night game in Sao Paulo, Brazil between the Packers and the Eagles and then everything else that we can cram into the next two hours. Even Mike, that there are a lot of sleepy people today because the adrenaline after that game, whether you're a cheese fan or a Ravens fan or a fan of neither, what was just a lot. I mean, I had trouble going to sleep because it was so exciting that it's hard to wind down after that and I do find as you get older, it's harder to do that where you don't get your sleep, where you only sleep a couple hours or five hours or whatever it is. I need my sleep now, Mike. The older we get, the harder it seems like when we were younger, it was really easy to pull all night or I don't find that easy anymore. Let me tell you something. The idea of five hours of sleep right now sounds like heaven. So don't tease me with five hours of sleep. So last night's game is the kind of game that I love in prime time where there is that adrenaline. You want to keep working after the game ends and you want to see what this player has to say about that. What that coach has to say about this. There's a lot of meat on the bone that we can really get to. The problem is I wouldn't in a position to get to it last night, but it spills into today. There will be takes, there will be quotes, there will be aftermath and there's a lot of stuff that happened. And let's start unpacking the things that occurred and we'll start with the end and work our way backward. You saw the final play. This is what replay review was put in place to rectify and it really was close. And I think about the standard as it was explained by folks like should be Hall of Fame coach Mike Holmgren, 50 drunks in a bar, need to unanimously agree that the ruling on the field was incorrect. And this is one where damn it's close and you have to get the right angle. But when you get the right angle, it is. For some of these angles, in my opinion, it isn't. There's one angle in particular where it is. And there it is. There it is. There's the one. That one's even better. That's the one. Because you can't tell for sure that the toes down. If that whole foot gets in and the toes never completely down and they have a weird rule about that, they finally codified. But regardless, that last one is the one that makes it clear and obvious. But for some of those, it's like, is it really clear and obvious? Is it really clear and obvious? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Then it's like, boom, there's the one. And that's one of the realities of playing a prime time, big platform, lots of cameras game. You get one of these five, six levels deep, Fox, CBS, one o'clock Eastern game on a Sunday. You don't have enough cameras to turn that over. You're not going to get that last angle that provides the definitive look that comes up just in time to make it a hundred percent clear that the ruling does need to be overturned. So this is one of the examples of technology in abundance for a big game, eventually providing a definitive look. There's a question, Mike, you know, and I know Lamar said that he still thinks it's a touchdown, but it was clear and obvious that it wasn't a touchdown. And you're right. This is exactly what replay was intended for to overturn these calls. And there's no, I mean, there's no way you get that right on the field. It's luck. If you get that right on the field, you can't see that it was that close, but replay fixed it and it fixed it correctly at the Chiefs won the game. I was just hoping, hoping beyond hope that it was a touchdown because it was obvious that they were in John Harbaugh was indicating they were going for two. And I wanted to see that that to me would have been a better ending to see how that finished with a two point conversion rather than overturned by replay, but it was the correct call. And they got it right. And regardless of what Lamar says, that's how the game ended. And that's how the game should have ended gutsy call to go for two under those circumstances. But I think that's how it should have been on the road, come from behind, steal it and get the hell out of there. Don't put it into overtime and give the home crowd a chance to boost the Chiefs on the night when they celebrated their most recent championship. And unlike last year, pulled off the victory, let's hear from some of the folks involved directly in last night's game on that fateful final play. You said it, James, I thought it was a touchdown. I thought it was a touchdown, but still think of the touchdown. That's on me, man. I just got it. I got to get both feet in. I got to harp on myself to catch everything, make sure everybody puts in the best possibility. So I take responsibility, next time I'm going to get my feet down. What a wild environment down there. It was two heavy weights in a fight right down to the end. And when they say it's a game of inches, it might be shorter than that. No, definitely nerve-wracking. I mean, could it look good for my angle on the sideline? But in the first view you saw, you could see the cleat. So that's a great football team and I'm sure we'll see him again at some point in the playoffs. So now we're happy with the win now and he's got to wear white cleats next time. That's my advice for him. You know, Patrick Holmes says that with a smile on his face and tongue planted in cheek, but that really is an interesting hypothetical. White cleats on that white line, would it have been clear and obvious with the 50 drunks in a bar have all said, when they saw the definitive look, that toe is out? I don't know. And it really is a lesson and we were talking about this last night on the playing back because we were able to see bits and pieces of the game. We were able to follow the game once we got 10,000 feet. But you should wear white cleats if you're a pass catcher for that very possibility that your toe is going to be close enough, that the foot is going to be in and you're not going to be able to blur the line on replay or you do blur the line on replay as to whether the foot was out. Just like wearing white gloves, when you're playing a team that's got a white jersey, some players will resist that. Why wouldn't you wear white gloves when the team you're playing has a white jersey? It's harder to see if you're holding the jersey, if your hands blend in with the jersey. Those are minor strategic points that can make a difference. And if that had been an all white shoe, maybe it wouldn't have been clear and obvious she rain in a situation that close. But you plan for everything and whatever happens happens. And that's one discrete finite clear example that if the shoe was white all the way through to the tip, maybe it wouldn't have been clear and obvious to overturn the ruling on the field. And it's going to be interesting, Mike, in the Ravens next game, if Isaiah likely comes out and white shoes, because I do think it might have made a difference. It would have been harder to see whether that toe truly was in or out. I mean, it was clear with the black shoe that it was out of bounds. But if you have that white shoe, then I think there's maybe a little more is that the shoe or is that the line? So yeah, sometimes it comes down to that. This game is a game of inches, there's no question about that, and this was a game of inches. But you know, Lamar had two other chances to make plays there and he didn't make those plays. What I didn't like, Mike, in that whole sequence there, the 38 yard pass to Bateman to the 10, they snapped the ball with 43 seconds left and they had an opportunity to spike it. Their next snap was at 18 seconds. To me, the time was more important than the play, because you were probably only going to get three plays, which is what they got. Either way, you were only going to get three plays. I think they would have been in a better position if they had taken their time, spiked the ball and then take your time, go to the huddle, you get three good plays out of that, which they did get three plays and ended up being three pretty good plays because you had open receivers. But the first one obviously was a little bit rushed and he dismissed likely on the first down. He dismissed them back there in the corner of the end zone. Well, he missed likely in the back corner of the end zone and likely jumped up, came down in a very awkward manner on his arm that made it look like there was a serious injury that he would not be playing again with last night and he was ultimately back for the final play. And in between, he missed eight flowers wide open, his eight flowers were wide open and then it was one of those, this is the value and I'm tapping the brakes before I say this, but I'm going to say it. This is the value of being there for the entire off season program. This is the value of developing an almost telepathic connection to your receivers because if you watch the play and I don't know if we have it, it was the second down play before the final play of the game, Zayflowers is cutting across the end zone and Lamar Jackson is buying time and Zayflowers kept going and Lamar Jackson threw it behind him. And when it happens, it's so quick. It's almost like Zayflowers. Did he have a chance to get that, but his momentum was taken in one way. The ball was behind him. The more you work with someone, the more you pick up those little nuances of how people move in those situations, it all comes back to you in theory in that moment where you're trying to find calm amidst chaos and you're never going to have a bright line. It's what I said about Aaron Rodgers, get it out on mandatory minute camp. You're never going to have a bright line that will take you back to, you know what? If you'd have just been there for those two practices, something would have happened during those two practices, kind of like wearing the white shoe, like you, with the white shoe, okay, well, there's an instance where you could have used it. This is far more nebulous and far more vague. And I say it because Lamar Jackson's get most of the off season program. So you're never going to be able to prove it, but it's why you should be there for everything because you pick up those little things about what your receiver does in a situation like that. Because maybe something like that happened on the second day of OTAs when you weren't there. And you know, we would have been in a different situation. There wouldn't have been a need for a review. The Ravens would have gone for two and we'd be talking for the last 13 minutes about whether or not it was a good play, whether it was executed well, whether they got the two point conversion, whether they didn't. Isn't it amazing how a toe changes everything. It really changes what we're talking about because we could be sitting here talking about, wow, how the Ravens pull that out. There's no way they should have pulled that out. The chief should have won that by a mile. They shouldn't have even come down to the end and instead we're talking about how close it is and how he didn't connect with those receivers. It really changes the whole storyline of everything because of a toe being out and not getting to go for the two pointer. And I think even if they had scored there, I think the storyline probably is a little bit different. If they lose it on a two point conversion, I think we're talking about different things today than what we're talking about now. But that's what this game is, Mike, you break it down and it comes down to one play and they didn't make the one play and they had two other opportunities to make the one play to get an opportunity to go for two and they didn't get it done. So here we are talking about, hey, Chiefs are going to be hard to stop again and how are the Ravens going to fix this. So when they play, if they play the Chiefs again, they're able to pull out a win. Well, and if they play the Chiefs again, it's far more likely now that the game will happen later ahead stadium because if the two teams have the same record, they both win the division. The Chiefs will be higher on the playoff tree period. Now the Chiefs have the Bengals coming up in nine days. So this was the kind of start to the season that really should have and apparently did get their attention. You can't play with your food early in the season. You lose to the Ravens. You lose to the Bengals. Getting the one seed becomes a lot harder because they own the tiebreaker. But for now, chiefs are in a great position. If they would beat the Bengals in nine days, they'll be in even better position to lock up the one seed and not have to do it the hard way like they did last year going to Buffalo, going to Baltimore. Although we saw last year that if they have to do it the hard way, they will. And last year, we saw a different receiving core to the Kansas City Chiefs. They have added Hollywood Brown via free agency. He's still recovering from the injury. He suffered in the preseason opener and Xavier Worthy or X Xavier Worthy want to get it right. And I'm not being sarcastic. I think everyone deserves to have their name pronounced the accurate way. We spent an inordinate amount of time yesterday on the bus trying to figure out whether it's Dave Taub or Dave Tob, the name of the special teams coordinator of the Kansas City Chiefs. And ultimately, ultimately, I was able to inform our colleague Chris Sims that it is indeed Tob as I had believed, not Taub as he had believed. And then he proceeded to call him Taub while we were talking about the game and his name came up again. So maybe it'll eventually take for Chris, but Xavier Worthy with a stellar debut last night. First touch in the NFL went for a shot out of a cannon touchdown weaving through traffic, but it's easier to weave when you can just squirt through the way that he did. And then he adds a 35 yard touchdown catch. This is the kind of deep ball that I think we're going to see a lot. Now it looks like a little busted coverage, safety wasn't over there to help, he got past the corner. But I think we're going to see a lot of that this year between X Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown and Rishi Rice stretching the field. You get into that 35 to 50 yard line. You better be ready for a long throw from Patrick Mahomes to one of those guys because they can go get it. And it was a great, great debut that angered Bill's fans right from the start when he had the long touchdown run. I already saw the chatter on social media because the bills could have had him and they traded out and they drafted a receiver later. So Keyon Coleman, no pressure on Sunday or for the rest of the season because the guy your team could have had had two touchdowns to start his career. 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I'm glad we'll be able to serve up some extra heat this season. Do you have any plans to celebrate? Absolutely. We're going to serve up America's favorite bonus wings for just 50 cents each to kick off the season. Any of our sources, whether it's in restaurant or to go, it don't matter, it's all 50 cents all the time. Are you worried at all about any competition this season? What competition? Limited time, price, participation, and selection may vary, tax and gratuity excluded. The keys have upgraded, Mike. This is the best receiving core they've had in three years. It's early, and Xavier Worthy though reminds me of Tyree Kill in this offense with how Andy Reid's going to use him. You know, I was amazed we put up that graphic last night of last year the Chiefs had four touchdowns of 20 yards or longer. I was amazed by that. Worthy had two of them yesterday. So I do think that he changes their offense and makes it better. The fifth receiver to have a 20 yard rushing touchdown and a 30 yard receiving touchdown. And Andy Reid has had four of those. He's going to use this guy in unique ways as a runner, as a receiver, and it's going to be exciting to watch. And when we had our draft last week of most exciting rookies in week one, he was my second pick. And this is the reason we expected to see this from him. We did see this from him. And we're going to see more of this from him all year long, Mike. You really had to hold your nose too for that. I did. Texas. Texas. The Aggie. You were the traitor last week. You're always quick to point out the traitors to the Aggies. You were the traitor, but you were right as well. Here is Worthy on his first NFL touchdown and Patrick Mahomes on last night's performance by one of his newest teammates. Man, it was crazy. We ran that in a preseason fumble, so obviously it was kind of bad. But just being able for them to have that trust in me. And I told Coach Negge, I think this plays a score, and it happened. So it was just an amazing moment, just my first touchdown in the field. He's so cool, calm, and collected all the time. You never even see the excitement on him. But he goes out there and makes plays. Obviously, we want to continue to use them more and more. But I thought he had a great day today, making big plays and big moments. And it was good to get the whole offense going and kind of seeing where everybody's at. Yeah. It really is amazing to see how quickly they integrate Xavier Worthy into that offense. It took Tyree kill a while. Remember when he was a rookie, he was just returned specialist guy for the most part. Didn't have a lot of involvement in the offense. One of the reasons they have been so supportive of Rishi Rice, despite the multiple issues he had this offseason in Dallas, he came in and learned the offense very quickly, had nearly a thousand receiving yards and how, boom, here's a guy right out of the gates. He's having a huge impact on the Kansas City offense. And that wrinkle, that wrinkle that the bills could have had him and traded out of that spot and drafted a receiver anyway. That's just one of those bright line comparisons that will never go away for as long as Worthy and Keon Coleman are playing in the NFL. And I kind of like the idea that, hey, Keon, if he can play like he can talk and he's got a great personality and he's a funny guy, this adds a little juice and this adds a little something to what the bills do on Sunday. And I guarantee you at some level, Joe Brady and Sean McDermott and Josh Allen, the offense coordinator, head coach and quarterback, respectively, the bills are thinking, we better get this kid involved. We better show that we did the right thing because GM Brandon Bean is going to want to be proven that he made the right call by not taking Worthy and ultimately selecting Coleman instead. Yeah, and Worthy has already proved that he was worth that draft pick and worth the trade up, Mike. In one game, he's done it and you saw Rishi Rice and we can debate whether he should have been out there or not or been on the commissioner exemplist. But I think they have their number one receiver and they haven't really had that the last two years when they didn't have a thousand yard receiver. He's that guy. He's their number one receiver over a hundred yards last night and I think he showed that and then you add Worthy in there with him. And guess what? They even have Hollywood Brown, you know, when he comes back, they've got some really good receivers now that they haven't had over these last two years and Patrick Mahomes is going to have fun with that. He was 20 or 28. I did count four drops. I don't know officially what they counted, but there were some drops in there. They had that problem last year. So they are going to still have to work on that a little bit because he could have been even better. He should have been probably 24 of 28 and over 300 yards, 291 as it was. But this receiving corps is going to be really, really good this season. I don't know whether drops are an official stat. Some places like pro football reference will track them. And I say that because you have a very low bar of what counts as a drop. Like if it just glances off of a pinky, it's a drop under the Shireen version of the Elias Sports Bureau. Right. And I have high standards and no doubt about it. I have high standards on these guys. Got to catch the football. If it's there. Well, and this is the other side of the coin that Debbie McCarty and I talked about on Tuesday when it was the great catch in the USC game. And you know, it's the oh, well, it's the gloves. Well, you better catch it then if it's the gloves. Kid areas. Tony had the gloves last year and that didn't help him an opening night. You still have to. It's still not an easy thing to do. Gloves are no gloves to make those catches consistently. You mentioned Rice and the question of whether or not he should have been playing. And I did a little something last night in the pregame. He had a hundred three receiving yards last night. He's clearly their number one receiving option with Xavier Worthy being not far behind. But Rishi Rice is the guy other than, you know, the security blanket Travis Kelsey. What crystallized for me yesterday and I didn't have a lot of time to delve into it during the pregame show. They're not going to do anything about Rishi Rice this year. He's playing the whole season. The only way he doesn't play the entire season would be if he pleads guilty to one or more felony charges between now and the end of the season because at that point, the league could say, could say they won't commit to this, but they could say that is the material change that would trigger the placement of Rishi Rice on paid leave, also known as the commissioner example list. As they've said, we don't anticipate putting them on paid leave, barring a material change in the case. And I asked the question yesterday, would a guilty plea be a material change? And I got kind of a, and I don't have the exact language. I'll write something about it later, but it's like that would be a factor that we would consider in determining whether to put them on paid leave. So there's no trial day. So there's no reason to plead guilty to anything. The earliest trial could happen is December based upon some of the actual, you know, work that I did yesterday, calling people and talking to people and trying to figure out where this stands and what could change between now and the end of the season. If there's no trial, there's no moment where, hey, are we going to work out a deal in advance or not? The one thing that prosecutors could do if they really wanted to screw Rishi Rice, and I would think they would have done it already. You go to them with a deal and you say, look, here's our offer. This is the best deal we're ever going to give you. If you don't take this deal right now, it's gone forever and we're going to trial on the eight felony counts. You got 24 hours to take this deal. And from a legal standpoint, he'd probably be stupid not to take it depending upon what the offer is, but from an NFL standpoint, it could put him on the commissioner exemplist while they evaluate and determine what the final punishment would be under the personal conduct policy. That's the only way the status quo is changing is if the prosecutors decide we're going to really stick it to this guy and make him an offer he can't refuse and yank that offer from the table and take this thing to trial whenever trial would happen at some point in 2025. We talked about this last week, Mike, but he's very fortunate that nobody was killed in that wreck. But you know what? The NFL could have used him in his example too to say, this behavior, we can't have this and we're not going to have this and we're not going to tolerate this. But he is playing and he's playing well. He's their number one receiver, no doubt about it and the offense is going to run through him and Xavier worthy all year long. So they've got an exciting offense and I, like you expect that they'll have him all year and probably have to serve that suspension next year. There will be a suspension and I would expect that it's going to be a pretty lengthy suspension. I know this is a graphic example, but it proves the point as well, if not better than anything can. When you play Russian roulette and obviously I do not advise that as a hobby a pastime or any type of diversion. But if you play Russian roulette and you get an empty chamber, no harm, no foul, right? You still shouldn't be playing Russian roulette. And if you don't stop it one of these times, it's not going to be empty. That's why I believe there should have been something done given the video that we've seen given what could have happened, if you don't address that behavior, somebody's going to keep rolling the dice. Somebody's going to keep doing that because hey, no harm, no foul. Nobody got killed where she rice is still playing. That's the concern that I have, but he'll be there. And I mention it because I think when I said last night, it's likely he's going to play the entire season. That's really not Pulitzer worthy. It's not, you know, I got into somebody's dumpster and piece together a little, you know, it's it's just kind of like the final bottom line synthesis of everything we've seen, everything I've learned, everything we've heard, he's playing this year. And the only way he isn't is if the prosecutors decide there's a way to stick it to him. Let's go. Let's go ahead and do it because we as the prosecutors want to address the behavior, even though the outcome was far better than it could have been. Okay. Let's pivot to Isaiah likely and for anyone out there who left him on their fantasy bench last night, when you really think about it, you shouldn't have because Mark Andrews hasn't practiced much. He's coming off the ankle injury from last year from the hip drop tackle. He had a car accident during training camp. He kept him out of practice for a while. And one thing we didn't realize is a lot of two tight end sets last night. They used a lot of two tight end sets. So Isaiah likely was getting his fair share and then some had a long touchdown, almost had a second touchdown. Here's John Harbaugh talking about T E two who really might be in the process of becoming T E one in the Ravens offense. Oh, I think Isaiah played just a great football game, a courageous game. I made so many plays, especially down the stretch play after play, I put Lamar obviously in the same category, all those guys, I mean, those guys were making plays and fighting the offensive line. I thought did a heck of a job out there. A lot of question marks that, you know, the pundits and the prognosticators had about the offensive line, saying that with that offensive line, we couldn't do anything. And the two way they went out there and played against that defense, I thought it was pretty impressive. And that's a challenge, especially in this environment, communication, and there were problems on both sides. But I thought Isaiah played a great football game. I was proud of him and a lot of other guys too. John Harbaugh always saw it even when his team loses, pundits and prognosticators. Well, the offensive line didn't hold up all that way. I mean, it was, it was not, it was not, you know, akin to some of the best offensive lines we've seen. Chris Jones was wreaking havoc all night long, but yeah, Isaiah likely was an unexpected star last night, 12 targets, nine catches, 111 yards, a touchdown, that great run that the NFL account wisely compared to a Lamar Jackson highlight from high school, that stop and let the guy run by you and keep going. It was a great play. It was a great night. And it was almost two touchdowns, 121 yards and 10 catches for Isaiah likely. And this really was an awesome play. He makes the catch, he cuts, accelerates, and then right at the very end he does that little quick juke. And that, that's the, that's something that you don't have to have a tremendous amount of physical ability. You're just using the other guy's momentum against him. You're stopping and he goes right by you. And we've seen it. It's just the planets have to line up just right for it to work and kudos to Isaiah likely for having the ability because it does take, it does take, you know, more than the average person can do, but to stop and let the guy go right by, it was beautiful. It was a beautiful play. And that was a moment where it's like, hey, okay, all right, let's go. We got, we got a game here and maybe the Ravens could have pulled it off. And if they keep throwing at the likely and he's kind of been on the verge of busting out. When you've got a great tight end in front of you, it's hard to do that, but he's just kind of been hanging around the past couple of years and maybe he's no longer going to be hanging around and maybe we're going to see that kind of night from him consistently. Yeah, and you know, you look on the other side of the ball, Mike Travis Kelsey's been one of the best tight ends in football for a really long time. And now you see they've gotten some better receivers in this offense. He was, I don't want to say a non factor because he did have a couple of big catches, but we're not sitting here talking about Travis Kelsey in the great game he had. We are sitting here. What about Isaiah likely in the great game he had? I thought he was the best tied in on the field. Here's one of Travis Kelsey's I think he catches, but for the most part, Mike, he didn't do a ton last night, but we did see a ton from Isaiah likely who I think proved that he can be one of the top tight ends in football. I do think he's going to be that security blanket for Lamar Jackson this entire season. And I agree with you. I think he's ascended above Mark Andrews, but they are going to be in a lot of two tight ends sets, but Lamar just seems to have a good rapport with Isaiah likely. So I think we're seeing more and more and more of him. And we may see a little less of Travis Kelsey in this offense this year with the better receiving core. The Kelsey catch was obscured by the escape. Yeah. Patrick Mahomes is freaking hudini at times. And we saw that a few times last night where a defensive player thinks he has a beat on Mahomes and Mahomes just stops and spins and moves and whatever. And that defensive player was flat wrong. And you look at the passing stats last night, Mahomes had more yards than Jackson, but it really was spread out 33 yards for Rice 35 yards. Wait. Oh, no, no, no, wait, I'm looking at the wrong column. Rice had 103. I was looking at the long. I'm sorry. I'll blame it on the fact that I'm sleep defraud. I was looking at the long play of the night and it's like 33 35. That doesn't set up to 291. Wait a minute. Is my brain working wrong where she rice was the dominant performer last night worthy with 47? Kelsey was fourth on the list, even behind Noah Gray. Noah Gray had three catches for 37 yards. Kelsey had three for 34. So he kind of slipped and that's the thing about tight ends. And that's what drives fantasy players crazy. You can never really predict on a consistent basis a big night. And Kelsey may have 130 and two touchdowns against the Bengals. Who knows? The Ravens might have just decided we're going to focus on taking him away and whatever the rest of the offense does, the rest of the offense does. And there were some moments where it was like, why is Rishi Rice being covered by a linebacker? Why? Why is Avery or were they being covered by a linebacker? They had guys coming in close to the line of scrimmage, those tighter splits. And they were getting into zone match ups and man to man match ups against linebackers. And that may have contributed to some of the numbers that we saw last night and some of the catches that we saw last night from people other than Travis Kelsey. Yeah, no doubt about it, Mike. And Mahomes does create so many things down the field with his escape ability. And, you know, Lamar does too, but, you know, he takes off running obviously a lot more than what Patrick Mahomes does. And that 122 yards that he had rushing last night on 16 carries, that was the third post in his career. Mike, 87 games, which amazes me, but he can't keep taking those hits all season. I know this, he played this game like it was the AFC Championship game. He can't lower your shoulder and do some of the things he did and survive this season. He's got to take better care of himself. And I don't even think he can have 16 carries a game going forward and survive this season. He's got to better protect himself if the Ravens are going to have him all year and get to do what they think they can do, which they're still a Super Bowl container. They showed that they can beat the Chiefs. They didn't beat the Chiefs, but they showed they can do it. They came within inches of having an opportunity to do that on a two point conversion. But to get back there, they need a healthy Lamar. And to get a healthy Lamar, he's going to have to better protect himself. I just don't think he can have 16 carries a game every game. And I know he's not going to, but don't lower that shoulder and don't do some of the things that he did last night. MDS came up with the stat at one point, the double triple, the 100 yards in multiple categories. And Lamar Jackson broke the record a long time ago. He had his 17th last night with more than 100, not receiving more than 100 passing yards and more than 100 rushing yards. Receiving would be another category where you could have 100 yards, but it's hard to imagine a quarterback doing that. For a quarterback, it's going to be passing and rushing. And you're right. He's not, let me start from the beginning of my observation here before the game. And I did see some folks on the sidelines who are like, "Hey, did you bring your flowers to Lamar?" So thank you for listening and watching PFT Live because I was joking about, since I'm Mike Flores taking him some flowers, but he was out there warming up and we were down on the field early when it was hot before the storm clouds gathered. He looks noticeably thin. There's no thickness in the torso. For a lot of quarterbacks, there's a thickness to the torso. There's that natural suit of armor that Chris Sims refers to that helps protect you against the wear and tear of playing the position when it's, you know, a matter of basic physics and large, strong, fast guy hits you. Your body's in a better position to distribute the forces that hit it. If there's more mass there, the mass isn't there for Lamar Jackson. And he, he was taking too many hits as a running back wood. I have always harped on the notion that if you're a quarterback, you need to have an instinct for when to slide, when to go down, when to get out of bounds, avoid that hit because every one of those moments when you get hit is the one that can result in an injury. And he did the unforgivable, in my opinion. And I say this as a card carrying member of the Lamar Jackson fan club and we have always wanted the best for him and we've always wanted him to get paid when he was supposed to get paid and he got paid two years later than he should have gotten paid and he eventually got paid and that's great. He needs to protect himself and the cardinal sin, it's the Jimmy Garoppolo RG three. We saw Garoppolo do it on that field six years ago, drop the shoulder to deliver a blow and tour his ACL. We saw it week one when RG three was playing for the Browns against the Eagles, drop the shoulder, get a shoulder injury and you're gone for weeks. You don't need to do that. He was not. And I understand there are occasions where you fight for the extra yard. He wasn't close enough to the first down when he dropped the shoulder and that that's just not sustainable. It'll burn brightly for a while and then he's going to be injured. He gets back to the point that I've been making to Steelers fans since the schedule came out. Oh, we're upset that we don't play any of the teams from our division until week 11. Be grateful for that because between Lamar Jackson, Joe Barrow and to Sean Watson, at least one of them is going to be injured by that and if Marjacking Jackson keeps playing the way he played last night, he's going to be one of them who was injured by the time the Ravens ever played the Steelers. Yeah, it's just too many hits, Mike. He took way too many hits last night and they're fortunate that they have some time now for him to recover, but they're not going to have that time going forward in the season. After every game, he's not going to have that time. So they do have some time now, so they got to work on that with him and not play every game as if it is the Super Bowl, as if it is the AFC Championship game, which I felt like he was doing last night. And yes, it was a big game, but it was the first game of the year. You got 16 more of these and then playoff games that you've got to get through. So in game one and game two and game three and game 17, you've got to protect yourself to get to the postseason to where then you can make some of those, okay, it's seasons on the line. Now, you know, there's no saving yourself. You've got to give it everything you have, but that wasn't the case last night, if he's going to play like that all year, I agree with you, he's not going to last a year. They still got 16 games to go. This is only the fourth year of 17 games. So early in his career, I got 16 games where right now you've played one and it was rough and tumble physical and you had all those carries and 122 yards and a lot of tackles and a lot of hits. And you still got 16 games to go. Here's Lamar Jackson and Isaiah likely talking about the bottom line from last night. They went to Kansas City with the goal of beating the Chiefs and they failed. I believe everyone in our locker room, he losing. Point blank period, coaches, trainers, equipment guys, cafeteria, women, and men, and definitely the players, you know, because we are the putting it on the line, blood, sweat, and tears. And for us to lose to those guys in the way we lost, even though I don't want to lose, but I can't be mad at my guys that he better. What do you take away from a kind of game like that against this game? I'd say this is probably the worst game we're going to play all year. So if this is the best that they got, I mean, good luck in the postseason. I don't know that I'd be right in that check, Isaiah. This is the worst game we're going to play all year. Good luck in the, not that those words are going to echo into January. The only thing that matters coming out last night is the fact that the Chiefs control the tiebreaker. These two teams will be dramatically different by the time we get to January. And I think that gets back to the fair and constructive criticism that we have been directing to Lamar Jackson. It's not a marathon anymore. It's a triathlon of football season. Your team is going to be very different. You just need to survive as long as you can, especially as the quarterback. Your biggest superpower as a quarterback is to be available to your team every week. And for Lamar, you can't have playoff intensity all season long, especially not with his playing style. It just won't work. And if it does, give him his third MVP, because he'll have off the charts numbers. And the Ravens will win four more games than they lose if it comes down to it. But we've seen it time and again, it's not sustainable, you can't, you can't treat every game like it's the Super Bowl. You can't treat every play like it's the defining moment of a key game. You just can't, not with a 17 game regular season on the way to 18. Yeah, no question about it, Mike. And, you know, that, that Chiefs defense is physical. I thought they were better than what they were last year. I think they have a superstar in Trent McDuffie, who they're going to have to pay an awful lot of money to after this season. He'll be in line for, for a contract extension. Chris Jones was Chris Jones. And they took it to Lamar, they hit Lamar and banged him up all night long. I know the sack numbers weren't there. I think they had one sack and that was a Chris Jones sack and that was on the fumble. But that, that defense is for real, Mike. And, and that may be one of the better defenses that there's a lot of good defense as I know in their division. But that's going to be one of the better defenses of the play. I think that Chiefs defense is better than we've seen the last two years. And I think that's going to make a difference for them this year. The last thing that got obscured by the outcome last night and the excitement of the final moments, there's, there's a play where, you know, if fought too hard, he wasn't going to get there. That's his eight flowers play. I was thinking that was the drop the shoulder. Anyway, anyway, that's, that's what I get for, for not making sure I know what I'm looking at before I pop off. The point I was going to make, and this became obscured by the fact that the Isaiah likely toe and the misfires became the dominant storyline. And I noticed it late in the first half, it's like, where, where is there, Kenray? And they were in kind of two minute mode, but there were spots where you could sprinkle him in as they got closer to the goal line. And end of the night, I mean, if you told me after the first drive, he's going to finish with 13 carries for 46 yards, three and a half yards per carrying one touchdown. I said, did he get injured? Like what happened? So we haven't, and I don't know that I haven't watched the full press conference with John Harbaugh. I don't know that anyone has scratched on that question. But there was kind of a mini mystery last night that got obscured by the dramatic ending of why didn't we see more Derek Henry in that Raven's offense. Yeah, come, I have it right here at the same thing Mike that what happened to Derek Henry the second quarter, he just disappeared and we didn't see much more of him. And he was so big on that first drive. He thought, wow, this is the Derek Henry we remember, you know, tough up the middle running even when he didn't get a ton of yards, just a bowling ball through that defense. And that's what the Baltimore Ravens needed with this offense. And then he just disappeared and we didn't see much more of them. On the two point conversion, I can almost guarantee they were probably going to run the football and have Derek Henry back there, would it have been Derek Henry or would have been Lamar Jackson, uh, taking it and trying to get into the end zone for the two point conversion. But I think it would have been one of those two guys to do that, but we didn't see a whole lot of them after that first quarter. I personally would have been rooting Shireen for Derek Henry jump pass to Lamar. There you go. Like it. That's what I've been hoping for. Cause that's the kind of thing that, that, that element that we've seen from Derek Henry gives Todd Monk in the offensive coordinator, plenty of possibilities and opportunities. And we just didn't, it got off track last night and it worked. I almost won the game, but it's just one of those questions that I think will naturally be asked. This was a big free agent acquisition. And the first drive led us to believe that Derek Henry was going to be a big part of things and by the end of the day, he wasn't. And we'll, we'll try to find out whether there was an explanation after the game and whether there might be one today. Cause you know, there's usually the day after press conference at some point, we'll hear from John Harbaugh at some point, we'll hear from Derek Henry, Derek Henry may have spoken in the locker room. It was just so frenetic after the game last night. That's just one of the things that we'll make a note to try to follow up on and provide anyone who might be interested. And there are plenty of fantasy players out there who are very much interested in why Derek Henry had such a great start and then didn't because he wasn't on the field very much. And he definitely wasn't getting the ball very much. Go ahead and take a break. One more return. They'll be on the field in Sao Paulo tonight, the Green Bay Packers, the Philadelphia Eagles. 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