Grant and Danny

Monday Reflections: Jayden Daniels a Prodigy? Caleb Williams Finding his Groove? + More | 'The Best Football Show'

From 'The Best Football Show' (subscribe here): Baldy shares his thoughts from his Monday morning film session on the Broncos impressive defense, Sam Darnold and the Vikings continuing to roll, the prodigy Jayden Daniels, the Bears finding a groove on the ground and Derrick Henry showing out on Sunday Night Football.

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Broadcast on:: 30 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

That's getting off the ball all the time. You're listening to the best football show. Hosted by Brian Ball Tinger. Good afternoon. Welcome to the best football show. I am Brian Ball to you. And you're nearly ever seen the day, but Mondays to go. I mean, you know, before the sun comes up, after the game last night, I'm not doing the streaming. I'm kind of breaking down. I've seen about half the game so far. You can download this on the free Odyssey app, wherever you get your apps, wherever you get your download, your podcast from. Download it. Like it. Subscribe to it. Let's watch it. Let's, uh, let's build this audience here. I mean, the film room here on the third floor NFL films can just do nothing but just grinding film. And it's been really eye-opening. By the way, you can follow me at Ball D NFL on Twitter and TikTok and Instagram, YouTube, you name it. So let's get to it because I was announcing for National Radio yesterday, the Denver Jets game. The weather was terrible. The football was worse. I think, and then I went back and I studied the film because the week before Denver had gone to Tampa and they, they kept a good Tampa offense to seven points and I thought, okay. All right. You know, I mean, maybe make great a bad day or maybe they're off a little bit. Now this, this team is so well coached. I talked to Jim Leonard yesterday, secondary coach in Denver. I talked to Vance Joseph, I talked to defense line coach. They brought great defense to jet life stadium yesterday and completely shut down the Jets. In fact, they kept them out of the end zone all game. They kept them the three field goals. They had a goal line stand where they had a pass interference in the end zone. The Jets got the ball first in goal at the one in the first quarter, four plays they couldn't score. So they did a little bit of everything, but how they do it, like Breeze Hall had 10 carries for four yards. So it always starts. We stopped in the run. At their defense line led by Zach Allen, okay, DJ Jones, you look at the guys inside, you look at Benito and Cooper guys outside. You look at the secondary, okay, because you have to look at the secondary PJ Combs and Brandon Jones. And then you look at the three corners, Patrick Cirquein, Jaquon McMellan, Jaquon McMellan, sorry, and Ryan Moss. So I actually, I love this kid, Jaquon McMellan. I mean, he's a, he's Carolina kid, he was a free agent signing last year, really earned a starting position and became one of the best nickels in all football. And I talked to Patrick Cirquein before the game yesterday, I'm like, so you're going to see a lot of Garrett out here today and you don't have to give me any trade secrets, Patrick, but, you know, he always brings sunshine, you know, it's pouring raining outside all day. You know, you see Patrick Cirquein before game, he's smiling, he's friendly, he's outgoing, like he's ready to play through a blanket over here Wilson, got one pass over, one pass the whole day. Ryan Moss did have a couple of passing interference penalties, but he's really good. And Jaquon McMellan is a great, it's a great corner, Brandon Jones just lights people up. But the fact is, because the Jets couldn't run the ball, Aaron Rodgers dropped back to pass 52 times in the state, 52 times, sack five times, he was hit 14 times and flushed to run five other times and really completed just over 50% of his passes. I mean, they, he struggled all day and look, they time me with a lot of receivers was bad. Real bad. I mean, Xavier Gibson is running a go route and he's throwing a conversion route, same thing with Garrett Wilson. I mean, he's throwing the ball in front of Tyler Conklin, like bouncing it off the turf. He was not good, but the receivers weren't good and the timing wasn't good, but I don't want to take anything away from Denver and Denver's defense, because this is who they are. You know, they lost their starting middle linebacker and Alex Singleton to a torn ACL. They replaced him like no loss. So and you know, you think about this now, Denver leaves Denver last week, they go to Tampa and they play. All right, there's a big storm coming, all this stuff. They go to Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, where Sean Payton used to take his Northern Saints in the summer to training camp. And so they go to the resort and it's pouring rain in there. They don't have an indoor facility. They got to go indoors to a tennis facility, a tennis court, indoor tennis court to practice one day, no distractions, total locked in. It's great coaching. It's great coaching by Sean Payton. You know, the Jets had, I don't know, 15 penalties, half of them were pre snap penalties. Guys jumped it off sides all day at every position. It was embarrassing. Take nothing away. Jack Allen, that defensive front, they're good. They're just flat out good and they chased Aaron Rodgers all over the yard. Now, let's get to Green Bay. Let's get to, you know, Lambeau Field and what the Vikings are doing to stay undefeated. They go up there. They jump on top of Green Bay 28 to nothing. Yeah, Jordan Love kind of a surprise starter. They jump on top of them 28, nothing. They get takeaways, Byron Murphy is taking the ball away. They get takeaways. They get field position. Sam Darnell is just cooking. It's four straight games for Sam Darnell now, four straight games with a 100 plus quarterback rate. I think right now he tops the NFL at 118. So Sam's playing great, but what's even better than Sam is the attention to details of the team. I don't care if it's CJ Ham with a blitz pickup, if it's Aaron Jones hitting the hole, if it's a stack route, perfectly aligned where Justin Jefferson breaks free off the stack. I mean, the smallest of details are unbelievable and it's just coaching. It's Kevin O'Connell, it's Brian Flores. It's the staff. They're very, very talented, very talented. Now you got Jordan Addison, you got Jalen Naylor, and of course you got Justin Jefferson. Oh, by the way, Aaron Jones went back to Lambo Field and he had a great game, a great game. I think he had just under a hundred yards rushing, had some big catches, like he has a skip to beat. The only takeaway, honestly, from Green Bay is that Jordan Love can flat out throw a football. I mean, down 28 nothing, he got back in the game to come within 28, 22, and then the Viking struck and he started taking the ball away, so it was pretty impressive. But Brian Flores' defense is a problem for teams now. Green Bay did come back from being down 28 nothing to put 22 points on the board, most they've given up, but they made a number of huge plays along the way too. So Vikings, they traveled to London this week to take on the Jets and they're gonna try to get to five. They were better teamed in the Jets, but you travel across the continent, you get to London, you play a game at Tottenham's first stadium, who knows what's gonna happen. But the Jets got a lot to get fixed between now and next Sunday for sure. Now let's get to the rookie of the year, offensive defense. I mean, James Daniels is a flat out prodigy. It's interesting just to watch him play right now because he's completing a mind-boggling 82% of his passes. You can't get him to make him mistake, although he threw his first interception of the season, one in four games. But anyways, he's just run the ball 48 times for four touchdowns and over 40 yards a carry, all over 40 yards a carry. But regardless, 82%, so I'm watching Cliff Kingsbury call the plays and honestly, I've known Cliff Kingsbury since I started doing big 12 games back in 2011, when he was out there. When he ended up leaving Texas, A&M and going to Texas Tech, you know, and he had all those quarterbacks. He had Manziel, and he had Mahomes, and he had Baker, you know, he had Kyler, you know, I mean, he's had a lot of good quarterbacks, right? But this James Daniels might be just, I mean, look, there's Mahomes, okay, and Baker, this James Daniels is four games, unbelievable. So it used to be that you see Cliff Kingsbury, and he'd have a, he'd have a play sheet like this, about this, about this big, like an index card, all right? Now you look at the play chart, and it's like this big, you know, it's getting bigger and bigger because the quarterback can handle more and more. And so they, they ran the ball great in a variety of ways. You know, Brian Robinson, Jeremy McNichols comes in, they got Jeremy McNichols came in that running back draft, I'll never forget, he's from Long Beach, California, went to Boise State, drafted by the 49ers, I believe, in the fifth round. He's been on nine different teams in eight years, he's been out of the league, he's been cut so many times, he's been out of league, he's been with different teams twice. He gets a chance in Washington because of the injury to Austin Echler. So the guy, let's pick up checkdowns, two touchdowns, he had one touchdown in his first seven years in the NFL, he had two yesterday, but he did it all. But it's just, you know, right now, this offense, everything is working, and it's Cliff and Jaden together. Jaden has an answer to anything you throw at him. I mean, Arizona, Jonathan Gann, Nick Rails, the defense court, they threw blitzes at him, he didn't really make a difference. He knows where to go with the ball, he knows where the checkdown is, where the height is, where the sight adjust is, and when it's not there, and he decides to take off, like he runs clean, he doesn't take hard hits, he either runs out of bounds or he slides for the most part, 48 runs in four games, 12 games, that's probably too many. A couple of design runs, but you should, he's a great runner. But think about this, he's completing 82% of his passes. Like, we've never seen anything like it. Like, if you were completing 82%, and you were the number one high school recruit in the country, we'd be astounding. If you're completing 82% in a Friday afternoon, you know, half speed practice, you'd be excited. He's doing it in a game right now, and it, you know, he's hitting his tight ends right now, you know, he's getting Terry McClearn involved. It doesn't matter. All these guys, they picked up off, you know, Noah Brown, you know, it doesn't matter. Luke McCaffrey, he's getting it to the open guy. I think Cliff's doing a great job of getting him open. Now, let's get to Chicago where they beat the Rams yesterday. It was a good game, 22, 18, 22, I'm sorry, 24, 18, it's final score. And for the first time, all year, the Bears ran the ball, and they ran the ball well. DeAndre Swift had a great game. He had a great game. He had 16 carries for 93 yards in touchdown. He, they threw to him seven times, completed all seven. Some of them were screens, some were checkdowns, some of them, you know, Caleb is just looking to get the ball out of his hands, but all seven attempts to DeAndre Swift were completed for 72 yards. 43 touches, 465 yards of touchdown, but they got the, they got the runs, you know, and you look at Matt Pryor at left guard, right, Nate Davis comes back in at, at right guard with Coleman Shelton, you know, they, but what the big thing and how they ran the ball was they got the two tight ends involved in the run game. We call it a Y Y, we put both tight ends next to each other. So you put the ageless Mercedes Lewis number 84 at age 40, who still has the biggest hands on a football player I've ever shook hands with, but you put Mercedes Lewis in cold commit at the point on a number of runs, and they handled the ends, they handled the linebackers, they were excellent combo blocks, like the two tight ends sets really helped unload and unleash this rushing attack of DeAndre Swift, I mean, the Bears got a swifty, and I thought it was a big difference. The other thing that happened in the game was, I know Caleb getting throw full out of yards through the touchdown of DJ Moore, which is his absolute dime, but what he did, and look, you can, you can nitpick this thing apart, how many yards per attempt and completion, all this nonsense. What he did in this game and what he's been reluctant to do is he trusted his protection and he stepped up into the pocket, into the eye of the storm and delivered the football. I think it's a real growth step in Shane Waldron offense for Caleb to do that. Yeah, I mean Caleb had made a living, winning the high he's been doing all kinds of things in college, just making these crazy athletic plays, but I think he's a very, he's a very good athlete, he's really good on his feet, he's got great balance, but I thought stepping up into the pocket and delivering the fall, even if it was eight or nine yard, you know, stick routes that commit or key now and whoever he did it yesterday, that's a big, big growth step. And then the final game last night in Baltimore, I remember all off season, people were questioning whether the king was dead, whether Derek Henry had anything left. So on the game's first play, they run a wam, patch of record on a wam, all right, the old wam play, wam bam. You know, he hits Ed Oliver on a wam and everybody gets the blocks, okay. Tyler Lindenbaum gets his block, Mark Andrews gets his block, and there goes Derek Henry out running the entire secondary of the Buffalo Bills. It looked like Derek Henry back in high school in Jacksonville, Florida, like he ran away from a whole secondary 87 yards. Now, back to back weeks, the Ravens ran for 274 against the Ravens. He ran 25 times for 151 yards against the Cowboys. He ran, they ran for 271 yards. That's Derek Henry, the Marjax and Justice Hill. And Derek yesterday had 24 carries for 199. So if you just even take away the 87 yard touchdown run to start the game and put the Ravens up seven nothing, he still had 23 carries for 112 yards. The guy right now, if you don't get Derek Henry, it's like the old Adams, like either you get the bull or the bull gets you, if you don't get Derek Henry at the line of scrimmage, he's going to truck you, like he has two weeks in a row, and it's going to make your run defense look pathetic, like he did Dallas in Buffalo. And right now the Ravens are playing their brand of football, they're pounding you. I thought they got great play yesterday. In fact, maybe the most versed, they've got some of the most versatile players in the league, Patrick Picard could do anything tight end, fullback, H back, F back, you name it, but you look at Patrick McCarry, who played right tackle last week, played left guard in this game. I've seen him play tight end. I've seen him play fullback. I've seen him play tackle, left tackle, right tackle, guy can line up. I've seen him play center. He can play any position in the offense line. He was a left guard yesterday. He's just remarkable, and he gave him some really good play at that position. So he got their five guys up front doing their work, the king is not dead, he's very much alive. He's a Hall of Fame running back, let's face it, he's on pace for a 2,000 yard season. Again, he's on pace. Who knows? I mean, there's a lot of games to be played, but the Ravens got their sea legs back, they got their identity, and right now there's nobody they don't believe that they can beat. And so the defense played large yesterday, got their past defense back. But look, it's a busy day here in the film room. I thank you for joining me here on the Best Football Show. I'll be back here tomorrow to break down both Money Night games and a whole bunch more of what I have seen from week four in the NFL. Thanks for joining me everybody. [MUSIC]