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Cowboys Win & Big Week 4 Matchups | 'The Best Football Show'

From 'The Best Football Show' (subscribe here): Baldy recaps the Cowboys win over the Giants on Thursday Night Football before highlighting a couple big matchups in Week 4 - Packers vs. Vikings and Lions vs. Seahawks.

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Broadcast on:: 28 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

This is Giddy, all football, all the time. You're listening to the best football show. Hosted by Brian Baldinger. Hello everybody and welcome to the best football show. I am Brian Baldinger, that Baldinger NFL, Baldinger Breakdown. Here in the third floor NFL film, you can download this wherever you find it. You podcast these days. You can free Odyssey out. You can like it, subscribe to it, watch it every day. I'm here on my third floor film room at NFL Films, a beautiful Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Just got done watching and studying last night's game at the Metallands, at MetLife Stadium between the Cowboys and the Giants. You can follow all of my stuff throughout the social media platforms at Baldy NFL, on Twitter, X, YouTube, Instagram, Threads, you name it, it's out there. So I put some breakdowns out there. But the big thing was Dallas last Sunday against Baltimore, gave up 60 yards rushing and had no answer to a good running team. And they saw the Giants last night. And the Giants ran 24 times. They gained 26 yards. Now, you can say, OK, it's not the Ravens, it's not Derek Henry, it's out Lamar. It's true, it's true. But if you look at Devin Singletary, you look at his career, his history. He averages 4.4 yards a carry. He gained 1.6 a carry last night. They played great run defense. They attacked the line of scrimmage, there's an old saying. There's an old saying on defense. It says, if you back up, you give it up. If you step up, you clean it up. And last night, the Cowboys cleaned it up. Mazzy Smith, OK. Joseph, Odigazua, Micah, and all the linebackers. You know, whether it was Kendrick's, or Overshone, or Leaf Out, Donovan Wilson, they played good defense. And they shut down the run game. Now, a couple of other things in this game. I mean, CD was a different city game. The 55-yard touchdown from Dak to CD, opened a game up from 7 to 6 to 14 to 6. And the Giants just couldn't close the gap. And on the play, CD was being covered by the Giants' best corner, Deontay Banks. Is a good player? Good player, but CD said he got bigger and stronger this year, gained 10 pounds. And you watch him get off press coverage from Deontay Banks on play. No, he doesn't get off, but he runs right by him. And then once he catches it, I mean, he ran away from both Deontay Banks and the rookie safety Tyler Newman, 55 yards. It was the biggest play of the game. So that was that. The Giants fought hard. They fought real hard. They made some play. He couldn't make enough plays. They had chances. And that's really where it comes down. Because if you look at statistically Daniel Jones outside of the last play through the interception, he played well. He completed a number of passes and close to 300 yards. He played well. But he missed his deep shots. Dak hit his to CD. He missed three. He missed one where the Giants were the Cowboys' raw sides. And he's got Slaton down the field. And he underthrows him. He missed Malik neighbors on a go route. He missed three go routes, where if you hit one of them, they probably win the game. And then when he does complete some passes down the field, it's not where the ball needs to be. The ball placement isn't where it needs to be to get maximum yards. He completes the pass. It's fine. I just think the offensive line protected very well. Very well. Daniel Jones had a lot of clean pockets. He made good decisions with the ball. He just missed the go routes. And that's the difference right now. Honestly, the Giants could have easily won that game if they converted some of their big plays. I could talk about some penalties that weren't called. That could have made a difference, but it's not worth getting into. They had their chance. The Giants had their chances last night. And I don't think anybody's happy about it in New York because while they played him tough and it was a 2015 game. And Daniel Brandon Aubrey did crush one from 60 to make another big play for Dallas. I mean, that guy is just a weapon. And you get from 65 yards in, they're marching him out there. And he's giving you three points. And it was important. He had two of them last night. So anyways, I thought the Giants fought hard. They had no run game that hurt him. Credit the Cowboys for that. And then I thought that-- and if you look at some of the matchups in the game, I thought Cooper BB, the rookie center making his fourth start on his first trip to the meta-lands, going up against a Pro Bowl nose tackle in Dexter Lawrence. I thought he played very well. No penalties, clean snaps, move the Ramble effectively, not great, but effectively then move the line of scrimmage, playing next to Gob and Tyler Smith. I thought they were pretty good. Pretty good. For the most part, they did a good job against the Giants' plitzes and Brian Burns and K-Von Thibodeau. Thibodeau got to one sack last night. But I thought overall, a young group, Tyler Smith in his second year and BB and Guy, and I thought they played pretty well. So the Cowboys get back on track in a short week when they got to travel. Now, let's get to some of the big games this week, Minnesota going to Green Bay. And really, there is no bigger motivator for any player in this business. And it's been like this forever. But there's no bigger motivator than going back against your old team and just showing them that you made the wrong decision. Like the Green Bay cut ties with Aaron Jones. Aaron Jones gave him seven great years in Green Bay. In fact, the last five games last year, he helped get them into the playoffs and make a good run in the playoffs. He had 500-plus yard games in a row, including week 17 against a good Chicago defense and then obviously against the Cowboys and against the 49ers. He played great. And last week in Minnesota, he had his first 100-plus yard day and he caught a touchdown pass from Sam Darnell. He looks like Aaron Jones, who is a great back. In fact, if you look at that draft from 2017, that included, you know, Christian McCaffrey and Alan Camara and, you know, I mean, just to go through the list of guys there. I mean, you could arguably say that Aaron Jones is the best of all of them. He's got over 60 touchdowns scored since that time. But regardless, he's going back to Green Bay. And I got to believe that he's going to be highly, highly motivated. Green Bay has played extremely well with Malik Willis. I mean, it's just a credit to Matt LaFloor, his ability to coach, to adjust, to take a, you know, to make the trade for Malik Willis and then, you know, gets the chance to, you know, because of the injury to Jordan Love, they've built an offense around his skills. And last week, he was awesome. First play of the game, he hits Jaden Reed for 30 yards. A couple of plays later, he hits Christian Watson for 30 yards. And then he finishes off the drive with a five-yard read option touchdown. He's been impressive. But Minnesota is benefiting from a couple of things. One, Sam Darnell's playing great football. He's surrounded by a very good offense line, a great running back, probably the best receiver in football, Justin Jefferson. Plenty of pieces around that, okay? And a coach in Kevin O'Connell that knows how to game plan, knows how to be creative, knows how to use his personnel. It was all on display last week. For example, the touchdown passed to Aaron Jones. That was Justin Jefferson in the backfield. Aaron Jones went out and played the flanker position. And he ran a shallow, you know, an old West Coast, shallow cross, you know, play. And dang, if Aaron Darnell hit him on, hit him on the run for a touchdown. Just extremely creative in what he does. And so Sam's playing great. But really, I think the difference in this game is gonna be Brian Flores. I mean, you know, there's talk that Jordan Love might go and it could be just talk, but regardless whether Jordan Love goes or Malik Willis goes for his third win in a row as a starter, they've got to pierce Brian Flores's defense right now. And I got to tell you, it is, it's difficult. C.J. Stratton last week. Struggled like I've never seen him struggle before. The Texans put up seven points. They got no deep shots. They took him completely away. They, they give you so many different looks. Are they blitzing? Are they dropping? You don't know until the ball snapped on third downs. But regardless, they just give you a lot of multiple fronts. Trying to think greener. We got three sacks last week against his old team. Andrew Van Geenkel, you know, he's playing great football. He was with Brian in Miami. Brian got a chance to get him out of Miami after a change of coordinated and all that kind of stuff. And he's playing great, you know, but you could look at Blake Cashman or Josh Mattelis or how they have figured out how best to use to find Gilmore who's still in a league corner. They're, they're tough. I think Green Bay will have their hands full in that game. But it's going to be fun to watch and fun to break downs and analyst dream to watch this game this weekend. But both teams are very well coached and right in the hunt, right in the hunt right now for NFC North supremacy. Because the final game of week four is in Detroit. Let's get to Detroit and Seattle because Seattle comes in undefeated. They go in there to the second Monday night game at Ford Field, an undefeated Seattle team, a Detroit team that lost, you know, a close game to Tampa two weeks ago. They ring down to last week down in Arizona. Let's just start with Detroit. I think the best defensive player in this league right now, and I don't think it's close as Aiden Hutchinson. You just, yes, he leads, you know, the league with six and a half sacks, but he just, he played 58 out of 60 snaps last week in Arizona. He just watched the effort to hustle fourth quarter. He gets his sack against Paris Johnson. It's a great spin move. Like he's been setting both tackles up ball game. First time he used it, he wins, he gets to Kyle Murray. He knows how to close games out. He is, you know, you combine him with Brian Branch and, you know, just the DJ reader and Alee McNeil, like they have real players defensively. They played great last week. He shut down a pretty good rushing attack of Arizona. The thing that's a little questionable right now is Detroit's offense. Yes, they got the running game going. David Montgomery, Jameer Gibbs, they got it going last weekend. That's good. They're going to play without their all pro center, Frank Ragnow. I believe that your offense line is only as strong as your center. Detroit has one of the three best offense lines in football. Can they be that good if Frank is an inner? And who's going to play that position? And how will they, you know, how will they play? You know, against, you know, Slaton and Kenny Clark, the interior defense line in a green bay. Something to watch and consider. But Jared Goff is a little bit off. A lot of passes have been defense. They're not getting the deep ball in right now. The running game did get going. They won the game basically on a hook and lateral, great Ben Johnson call. Are they executed perfectly at the end of the first half? For 20 yard touchdown to Jamir Gibbs. Perfectly executed play, but they needed that play to get to 20 points. And that's what they look like. They look like a 20 point offense right now, which is okay. If your defense is playing great, but Seattle comes in and their defense is playing fantastic. Now they haven't seen an offense like Detroit yet. That's fair. They saw, you know, New England, they saw Bo Nick's week one. You know, they haven't seen great offenses. So Mike McDonald's defense is playing great. Statistically, this would be a different challenge. And then you just got to take your hats off to Gino Smith because really the difference in the game last week was the big touchdown to DK Metcalf against Miami. Like he double moved, you know, he got behind Jovan Holland and Gino put it on. And you know, DK can beat anybody in this league. You know, he can beat any corner. He's a beast. They feed him. They take their shots. They're not great up front on the offensive line. They're not. Both tackles will have their hands full with Aidan Hutchinson. But Gino Smith is resilient. He's tough. He can extend plays. They played without Kenneth Walker in the last two weeks. Zach Charbonnay has been okay. So, you know, they've overcome their injuries. I'm pretty excited to see another game from Boye Mafé who's had some good rushes in every game, starting to get some sack numbers. He looks to be coming on. You know, he's a former sec round pick out of Minnesota a few years back, but he looks like he's coming on. Really, it's, you know, you look at just the two quarterbacks, golf and Gino Smith, both team, you know, both are on different teams and where they started. And, you know, Gino has found a home in Seattle. They trust him. They believe in him. And he's delivering. They've got three great choices to throw to. Jackson Smith and Jigba, Tyler Lockett, along with DK Metcalf. So that's a handful, I think, for Detroit secondary to try to handle. But it could be just the atmosphere. It could be Aiden Hutchinson, you know, and really in the hands of the coordinators on Monday night. It should be, it should be a great way to finish week four. We're already at week four. It'd be a great way to get ourselves through September. I always say September is the new August. We saw the Cowboys run defense get fixed last night in a week. We saw the Eagles run defense get fixed last week in New Orleans. Can they sustain that type of play? Sometimes you just got to play yourself in a shape and get back to your fundamentals. So we should see this league to kind of shape up this week as we get out of September. And we start looking ahead to October. And, you know, who can start stacking W's? Who can figure out their identity? Who could play to their identity? You know, and our teams like, like Cincinnati and Jacksonville. Are they dead in the water or can they come out of the crypt? Like all that stuff we're going to talk about next week. So thanks for joining me here today. Enjoy week four everybody. We got up to a good start and a good game last night. We're down to the wire between the Giants and Cowboys. More good football coming up this week. [MUSIC PLAYING] (dramatic music)