October 17, 2023 • 40 mins
Jason Smith and Mike Harmon react to the Cowboys beating the Chargers on Monday night. Jason breaks down why Dak's decent game may be the best he can do this season. Were the referees and the league favoring the Cowboys on their nationally broadcasted game? The guys explain why Justin Herbert's poor performance is more about the Chargers continuing to struggle in headline matchups. Plus, the Rangers are 2 wins away from the World Series!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for listening to the best of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Carmon podcast. Be sure to catch us
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Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is the best of The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon on Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well it is over in Los Angeles. The Cowboys walk
away with a twenty to seventeen victory over the Chargers.
Justin Herbert is picked off by Stefan Gilmour. The Chargers
last gasp drive ends with an I int Herbert had
been sacked the play before by Micah Parsons, so it
(00:51):
was uphill odds at best on those last couple of plays,
But Justin Herbert puts a cherry on top of this
craptastic Sunday. The Chargers lose and the Cowboys go on
to win. And look, the Cowboys played well tonight. Right now,
I give Dak Prescott credit. He played well against a
pretty good defense. You know, he made good decisions with
the football. He ran the football well through for one,
(01:13):
ran for one. Look, Dak had a good game, right,
I'm not taking away from Dak. He had a good game. Now,
was he unbelievable? Did he control the game?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
But Dak played a good game. And tonight he was
the Cowboys best player. Okay, I'll give I'll give him that,
But this game tonight, the Chargers should have won this
game by ten points. Justin Herbert was so awful and
he was inaccurate, and he sailed the ball and he
missed open receivers the entire game and it was frustrating
to watch. It was frustrating to see just hey, easy
(01:44):
plays that the Chargers should make. And it's not like
the Cowboys had great coverage on the wide receivers, specifically
Keenan Allen. He was open a lot and still Allen
could have had a bigger game. And there were plays
where Justin Herbert just missed been wide receivers. We talked
about it a few minutes ago. On a big third
and eight from inside the ten yard line, Quentin Johnson,
(02:06):
who could have had his big hey, hey, I'm here,
I'm actually in the NFL play where he would have
caught a touchdown pass Justin Herbert doesn't see him. And
I don't know if he locked in on receivers too
long tonight or whatever it was, but he was just
off and it was a lot of unforced errors. He
wasn't sacked until the very end of the game. That
time he got sacked by Micah Parsons was the first
(02:27):
time he got sacked all night. It's not like he
had to keep picking himself up off the ground. It
was just a bad game. And when your quarterback, when
your franchise quarterback, plays like that, it's hard to overcome it.
When you look at why did the Cowboys win? Hey,
cowboys played fine right now. I'm sure they'll talk after
the game and say, oh, yeah, we're back, We're this.
We came in with all the emotion we had to
(02:47):
win this game, and it was so excited the Chargers.
They should have won this game by ten points. And
I look at Justin Herbert and say, he really just
crushed them tonight. As good as he is, as great
a quarterback as he is, he was just that bad tonight.
Where even an average night by Herbert, and I mean it,
it's a double digit win for the Chargers in this.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Game twenty two to thirty seven on the night to
twenty seven two touchdowns, the pick and then that late sack.
I have to ask this question, and I do so. Nah,
maybe both my tongue planted firmly in cheek because I
was watching it with the fellas here in the studio.
They're making us sound so pretty tonight. Alex Tyshirt, Ryan
Berschinger and Micah Parson's on the sack. I mean he
(03:27):
lands on Justin Herbert, right right on top of him.
Isn't that supposed to be a penalty?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I don't think it should be, But if we're gonna
call it sometimes, that's one where he came right through him, right,
big hit. I think all of us that are football
watchers would agree that it shouldn't be. But in a
day and age where we see that flagged oftentimes seemed
in the moment where it's like, uh, waiting for the
(03:53):
laundry to fly, that it never came, but the pockets
suddenly collapsing and that was out a second and two
with just under two two minutes remaining, So kind of
the curious, Hey, let's do a big drop back here,
not that you're necessarily gonna You haven't run the ball
particularly well at all. Twenty three carries fifty three yards
on the night, but a second in short seemed like
(04:15):
a quick get the ball out of Herbert's hands might
have been the way to go. But you get the
breakthrough for Parsons. To your point, yeah, erratic all night long.
There's several throws to keenan Allen. You could do a
super cut of those that are just easy. A couple
of near misses, you know, the old hey, the if
the DBS catch could catch kind of things, the interception
(04:39):
total would have been higher, and you got a really
good effort from the Chargers defense overall. McCarthy decision making notwithstanding,
you know you did a good job. Tony Pollard average
two yards of carry effective on the pass game, but
even that was five catches for twenty yards. And then
he had one where he should have been stopped after
(05:01):
a seven yard gain and instead a mistackle turned it
into a sixty yard sprint. So you did a good
job of containing them in five sacks of Prescott. He
was under duress, quite the opposite of what you saw
for Herbert all night. But they make the plays when
it counts, get the field goal just over two minutes
(05:21):
remaining and the Chargers can't finish the job for Justin
Herbert and I will be you know, we're ahead of
the curve. We always ask it, right, as much as
you make on Staley and everything else, when's Justin Herbert
gonna win games in the fourth quarter? Form?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, look, I'll answer. I'll answer your two questions in
the order you asked them. The first one was the
penalty that wasn't called Micaeh Parsons falling on top of
Justin Herbert. You're right, it is a play that you
kind of see called. But what we have seen in
the NFL now and now that we've had enough to
look at replay and watch enough games, is that the
best I can say for replay is this, and you
(05:59):
take this however you want. Sometimes the NFL sees a
play and just says, now it's fine. And sometimes they
do all they can to make a decision in the
review booth that benefits a team.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Booom.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
They do it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
All the time. That's what that's the It's so inconsistent.
It's the only consistent thing I can say.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Tweet that out with the in front of the fire,
and here's.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
The Cowboys who are the beneficiary of that call. If
that happened the other way for the Chargers and it
was Bosa who was falling on top of Dak Prescott,
can I say for certain would have been called the
same way.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
I can't, because the NFL called.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
They call that when they decide they want to look
at something and overturn it, they do it right. Like
I knew yesterday when the Jets were playing the Eagles,
and the Eagles go for it on fourth and goal
from inside the Jets three, and he gets stopped and fumbles, right,
I knew when they go back and look at it
seeing this play, it's okay, at what point is he down?
(06:59):
At what point do you rule the quarterback is down?
I get, oh, he's not technically on the ground, but
you're a quarterback now and you're protecting there's a time
when you're down. I'm watching this replay and we've seen
you've seen the play that hurts gets rule for a touchdown,
And I said, they're gonna go up and they're gonna
look at this soak. They're gonna look at this play
from a thousand different angles and They're gonna do everything
they can to give Jalen Hurts the touchdown.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
The Eagles are five and zero and he's a big star.
They're gonna do everything they can to give the Eagles
a touchdown. And what happens, Boom, Eagles get a touchdown.
Right all the time. It happens all the time. Right.
Let me go back to the flag with in the
Jets game against Mahomes, when the Jets pick off Mahomes
a chance to win the game. Instead, the flag is
thrown after the Jets intercept the ball. And I'm just
(07:41):
going off the Jets game, and I'm sure other other
fans go, yeah, I remember this one.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
We're at the end of the Giants bills last night.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, like this team we played here. Yeah, you can
say that. That's the best thing I can say. Sometimes
when it's a call like that, Oh it looks legit, Yeah,
let it go cowboys, Yeah, Cowboys get the sack. But
other times it's we're, you know, we need to do
everything that we can to look at this to see
if it's something we can overturn or that we absolutely
need to do. Whatever it is, We're gonna look so
(08:08):
careful at it just to see what we can do,
if we can really alter this decision from the field,
and that's what happens. That's the best thing I can
I can answer that about that, when you talk about
Parson Sack, if it happened versus the charge, it's the
best thing I can s No.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
It's the curiosity, right, I mean the Darren Waller getting grabbed, held,
interfered with, and it's a no call and off we
go into the good night. As bad as Dable and
company were at managing that game. Should have won that game, right,
should have finished that game off. You'd look at the
Bears game to go back to that and the Viking.
(08:44):
There was a big play along the sideline because we've
had trouble in the NFL adjudicating whether a foot goes
out of bounds, whether a ball's gone out of bounds
before it's recovered cleanly. The Bears in their postgame explanation said, yeah,
this is one of those games where there weren't enough cameras,
didn't have ample angles to overturn that and keep the ball.
(09:05):
Huge play along the sideline that would have given them
a great field position instead, well, you know, the moving on,
so to your point. I'm sure some folks are cringing
and maybe saying stop whining, Jets guy or Bears guy
or whatever, but it is something to consider. There. There
(09:25):
is a It is a business, and certain outcomes and
certain discussions are good for business. And you know, yesterday
was a day where I saw, you know, Bill Krackenberger,
who does the show Countdown to kick Off here on
Sunday mornings. He goes, I don't think I've ever been
told by more people that the NFL's fixed after the
(09:49):
games from the early games of yesterday, because there was
a lot of curiosity, right, some strange results, and look,
that's the NFL in a nutshell, all right. We talked
about it with Lock and for a lat are the
only thing that's been a given road teams are in
games and home field advantages might be a myth like
a yetti and that the Unders are cashing with great regularity,
(10:12):
but it means week to week we're getting some really
strange play all along, right, Cleveland, we love the defense.
Injuries to keep players for the forty nine ers. PJ.
Walker was the quarterback. That was the guy the Bears
decided they didn't need. It's their back and he starts
for Cleveland and engineers a win. I mean, it is
(10:32):
a weird world out there, so yeah, I mean have
your conspiracy theories. In the end, you got to figure
out how to prove it and have some fun with that.
And look, I just think, you know, the human element
comes in and there's gonna be bad calls, decisions, quick
conversations of did you see that cleanly? Because like even
the way the Chargers got the ball back to eventually
(10:55):
punch it into the end zone right with the ever
touchdown the punt, you could say, okay, he blocked his
protector back in, but the Chargers player makes contact with
the returner, So what Why wasn't it called there? Why
did the Chargers get the ball after the ensuing scrum?
(11:16):
It's just curiosity to me sometimes how these are adjudicated now.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
When it comes to look, that's the best thing I
can say right that that's just the reality of the NFL.
And you look, just like in the NBA, the NBA
knows what referees they're sending to do playoff games. They
know when they're sending Scott Foster to do a son's
playoff game. They know when they're doing all of these
things right.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
They know.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
So you can't sit here and tell me that he
officiating is always one hundred percent on the up and up.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
They know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
If something gets tilted one way or another, hey, stars
get protected.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Star teams go. Yeah, of course they do. Of course
they do.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And that's an example of it because the Mica parsising
is something easily if it was Joey Bosa, I can say, well,
by letter of the law, and then Troy Aikman's on
TV saying, law, I disagree, but letter of the law.
This is a this is a penalty. They've been calling
this in the NFL the last few years. As long
as there is some kind of wiggle room and stuff
is open to interpretation, yeah, stuff like this is going
(12:11):
to be able to happen. And it's and you know,
it's not that it's something that that was something so
egregious that cost the Chargers the game, but it's something
that the other way around. Yeah, you know, I don't
think a team other than the Dallas Cowboys are going
to get the beneficiary of that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It's not gonna happen for him. Jerry Jones is celebrating
right now, he may be dancing in the locker.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
The Chargers falling to the Cowboys twenty to seventeen, and
the Cowboys are gonna say, oh, we're so great, we
got it back. The Chargers just said, here, we can't
get it going in the clutch. We're gonna hand you
this game. You want to know why the Chargers fail?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We talked about the penal that could have been called
on Micah Parsons for falling on top of Justin Herbert,
But the Justin Herbert clutch gene has become a topic
of conversation, right because each three games the Charges have
lost this year, They've had a chance to win. Herbert's
had a chance to win and at the end and
hasn't done it. I don't know that it's a Justin
(13:18):
Herbert thing as much as it's a Chargers thing. Right.
I want to talk about a couple of plays in
the final in the final possession for the Chargers that
illustrate why the Chargers fall short. Okay, now they get
the ball back after the Cowboys take the lead. They
have all kinds of time left to go. Right, there's
just over two minutes left and the ball they're own
(13:39):
twenty five yard line. They have all kinds of time, right, Okay.
First play is justin Herbert throwing it pass to Keenan
Allen who runs out of bounds a thirty two yard line.
Keenan Allen could have turned it up and gotten the
first down, potentially gotten the first I don't know if
you absolutely would have gotten it, but this is where hey,
it's the end of the game, dude, and yeah, you
(14:00):
were just happy getting the ball and going out of bounds.
Time is not a huge factor. You want to get
first downs because now you're out towards midfield. You get
this first down, right, you're out towards the forty yard
life potentially probably could have gotten out there, but instead
he easily goes out of bounds. Uh, dude, you got
you gotta go for it, man, You gotta have some
kind of sense of urgency and you gotta play smart
(14:21):
and focused. Didn't see it on that play, right, could
have been a first down. Then you have the net.
Then you have that play get wiped out because of
penalty on the Cowboys. So the Chargers take a first
and five. Okay, first and five, second and three. All right, fine,
you know, hey, you're in four down territory. I would
say three plays to get three yards rather than but okay, fine,
(14:41):
that's you decide to go with Justin. Herbert scrambles and
probably could have scrambled for the first down without putting
himself in harm's way, but he slides a good three
yards short of the first down. Dude, it's the end
of the game. Man, try to go.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You don't want it, but this is the end of
the game. You're trying. This is where you go in
and you die, and you hold the football out. You
find a way to do it. This is Herbert saying, hey,
we have plenty of time. We have plenty of time.
And then what happens. Micah Parson sacks Justin Herbert and
then he throws an interception. I think it's more of
a Charger's clutch gene overall, and Herbert being the head
of the snake and being the quarterback, he gets the
(15:18):
lion's share of it.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
And yeah, he had an awful game.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And yes, you know, you look at the clutch thing
with him, and I see part of his fault. But
I just overall look at the Chargers in big moments,
in big situations, and I just don't know if they
have it, Like like they fail on fourth and one,
Brandon Staley goes for it, runs all kinds of different plays,
and they're not good at it. They can't get a
front the biggest plays of the game, the Chargers find
(15:41):
a way to fall short. So I don't know that
it's a it's just strictly a Herbert thing. It looks
to me like it's just a Charger thing. You know,
Charger's gonna charger. You know, they have chances to make
big plays, say hey, we can make a big play
right here, and we don't for one reason or another.
Either we can't execute the play because because we just don't,
or we decide, hey, getting a first down is not
(16:02):
really what I need right here. I need to make
sure that I get out of bounds when there's two
and a half minutes left to go, and I can
still get out of bounds and get a couple more
yards upfield, and maybe if it's second and a half
yard that's the play we take and we get a
first down a little bit easier. Justin Herbert dies for
the first down, we get a first down, it's a
little bit easier. I just don't see it overall from
the Chargers, and to kind of make a take a
(16:25):
big umbrella over the failures of the Chargers why they
fall short. I mean, that's something that sticks out to me,
especially after seeing how they attack those big moments in
the game tonight against Cowboys.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well, and we've been watching it for years, and certainly
with Justin Herbert, just looking up random stats because it's
fun to just find randomness in games decided by seven
points or fewer, because it's one of my pet peeves.
It's not or less or fewer when we're counting. He's
(16:55):
five hundred coming into tonight, so he'll go to one
game underneath everybody's punching bag and close games in primetime.
Kirk Cousins seven games over five hundred in his career,
games decided by zero to seven points. To just show
you perception and where we go and your point on
(17:15):
Alan going out of bounds got himself towards the sideline,
and I don't know if physically, he just couldn't get
himself turned back in and up. But looking at this,
staying on that side of the two minute warning might
have been it before they'd get back up under center.
But either way, you just saw the excellence of execution.
(17:36):
We talk about these game situations. You can't anticipate that
you're blowing everybody out. I would think in season most
of your work is done on fine tuning for situations
like this. I mean, unless I'm just wrong, which is
always possible, but unless I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
(17:58):
But legitimately, right, you're talking about these kind of situations
of all right, what's getting us the next best play in?
How do we execute decision making? Like that's the point
of emphasis, and particularly if you're the Chargers, because you've
done this now for multiple years under Brandon Staley. This
(18:19):
is not new territory where in the final minutes of
a game you're stressing and the fundamentals that you've been
pretty good at taken care of for much of the
game suddenly go out the window. Right, It happens too
frequently to be an accident. You're just showing. Here's another
data point in the long Wikipedia page of inability to
(18:41):
get things done in the final minutes of games because
you had chances, your offensive line had done a good job.
Now to your point from last hour, this should have
never been in doubt. You should have had been able
to pin your ears back and be rushing Dak Prescott,
who they got to five times over the course of
the night, by the way, But for Herbert and for
(19:04):
the Chargers, it's just another head scratcher of Wyatt. Why
does this continue? And in the definition of insanity that
we like to use right the same thing over and
over and expecting different results. This is their identity until
proven otherwise, if we're predicting a close game, I'm predicting
an ll.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Hi, this is Jay Glazer.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
And you may know me for the world of football
or fighting, or even shows like HBO's Ballers. Who you
don't know is for my entire life. I have lived
in something I refer to as the Great depression, anxiety.
So now I'm coming out with a new podcast, Unbreakable,
a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer, where each week
while we.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Talk about mental health. I hope to describe it, give
it words.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Listen to Unbreakable with Jay Glazer on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever where you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Well, the Cowboys win a thriller over the Chargers.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Not a well played game, but what do we always say,
as long as it's close, that's all that matters.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Cowboys go to four and two, Chargers drop.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
I mean, look, this is a This is a game
where you start to look at the standings now in
the AFC West and you go, oh, wait a minute, man,
everybody else has at least three losses.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Chargers have three, Raiders have three. Chiefs are now going
a two game lead in the division.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
It's one of those years where the Chiefs.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Haven't been great, but they're gonna wind up plinching this
thing by Thanksgiving again.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
It's just gonna.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Happen for But we'll hear from Brandon Stalley coming up
in a few minutes as he's getting finishing talking to
the media. Right now, the Chargers loose to the Cowboys,
and I can already tell you what one because the
show is ahead of the curve. I can already tell
you what one the big driving headline is gonna be
for the Cowboys out of this.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
They're gonna talk and talk and talk and talk, and.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
They're gonna say how great Dak was, and look at Dak,
this was his best game, and look how great we
always knew Dak was this good. And they're gonna talk
about making clutch plays and Micah Parsons sacked the one
defensive play they really made the game. And they're going
to talk about coming off of this loss to San
Francisco and the intestinal fortitude of a champion and going
(21:29):
on the road Monday night baseball, playing a home game
Monday night in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Look at what they overcame to win.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Boy, we really start believing in ourselves when the reality
is the Chargers gave them this game justin Herbert was awful.
It should have been a Charger win by at least
two touchdowns if he was anything accurate, if he had
an average game, it would have been the Chargers by
two touchdowns. Their touchdown passes that he missed on, multiple
touchdown passes that he missed on, the lack of urgency
(21:57):
at the end of the game. Everything you want to say,
the Cowboys are gonna talk and talk and talk and
there it's yeah, that's great.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I have to listen to it.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
But really, the Chargers gave them this game, and that's
gonna be the overwhelming narrative coming out of Dallas, as hey,
because we have to have this narrative, because we've convinced
ourselves every week is so unbelievably emotional that it's the
super Bowl, and coming off of last week's win, how
do we get back to where we are?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Look at this huge win we met and they're.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Gonna over emphasize the things that they did and not
talk about how and understand that, boy, were lucky because
we escaped on this one. This is gonna be a
win for the team and we're back and we think
we're terrific. Trust me, that's all you're gonna hear from
the Cowboys. And it's not reality. It's not reality at all.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Well it should be. I mean you you take the
positive points, right. History is told by the winners.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
That should be on a T shirt or is that
already a T shirt?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
That's already a thing.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Really, history is.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Taught by the winners. It's a it's a pretty old statement.
They ad a couple thousand years.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Oh oh, Winston Churchill. Okay, well, if it wasn't in
the crown, I wouldn't have known that. Well, Kinston Churchill
didn't say it, I wouldn't have known that.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah. So the the idea just being that, look I won,
and look, oftentimes it takes us into real world and
off of the playing field. But you know, all the
people that that have the the victory get to you know,
get that verbal history going, write it down. Here's the
the tales of our of our win and in this
(23:28):
case it's going to be Look, he was quiet all day,
but when it mattered, Micah Parsons made the play of
the game. Gilmore had been called for a penalty, had
been you know, kind of abused a little bit by
Keenan Allen on route running over the course of the day,
but when it mattered, he was there and he was
the one that secured the game clinching interception. It's all
(23:52):
the matters, right, succeed and proceed for you had the
the big sixty yard burst off a broken tackle by Tony.
What are they gonna say he was, Well, we talk
about it for fantasy or for any other purposes. He
was over one hundred total yards against the Chargers. Nobody's
gonna remember how that came to pass. Same thing here
for Dak Prescott. He was battered and beaten and bludgeoned
(24:15):
all night, found Cede Lamb when he needed to, found
Brandon Cooks when he needed to, And your field goal
kicker was true. Doesn't matter that Mike McCarthy botched things.
It doesn't matter, you know, here in Los Angeles, because
it's become you know, commonplace. Yeah, I mean, the tail
is going to be about the Chargers and late game
(24:36):
execution and finding some other stats that are now being
pushed forward because people raising their hands on Justin Herbert. Hey,
fourteen fourth quarter comebacks or game winning drives, I should
say eleven fourth quarter comebacks, all of those kind of things. Okay,
But the sentiment, the gut, is that this team finds
(24:59):
a way to uh rip your heart out, to go
back to the old Steve Irwin thing that he said
so many times uh in his career. So I mean
you're you're just looking at a situation for the Cowboys. Yeah,
feel chesty. You got the Rams next. See what Sean
McVeigh dials up for you. Offensively. I know Kyron Williams
(25:20):
is hurt, but it's a curiosity right of what that
offense brings to bear. But you celebrate tonight because your defense,
while they weren't spectacular, they made the two big plays
when it mattered, they.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Did look and they won the game.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But because of their emotional attachment to every single game
this year, they're gonna inflate this as something that's it.
This is this is not Hey, we went on the
road and we beat that and we beat the forty
nine er.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yea that flag high heading back home to Dallas.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Look, victors, Look, I can give you something great for
the Cowboys. But again with this it comes with a
caveat right, So it is with the Cowboys. But I
can give you something great. Look, Dak Prescott played really
well tonight and they will prop him up the next
couple of days.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
Jerry Jones tomorrow will be on one O, four to
three the fan.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And they'll say this is a Dak Prescott that I
knew this is the Dak Prescott when we gave him
that money. We are expecting games like this and games
like this or what Super Bowl quarterbacks are made from.
And that's exactly what we got from Dak last night,
and he was absolutely magnificent.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
It was Dak.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Okay, that's you're gonna get and they're gonna prop Dak
Prescott up. And yes, he did have a really good
game tonight. Right, he had a really good game. Now
you know the caveat is this is kind of the
peak game that Dak Prescott can have. All Right, Dak
is no longer a twenty five, twenty six year old quarterback. Where, hey,
the best days are ahead of him and his continued
(26:46):
growth is gonna be fun to look forward to. Now,
Dak Prescott is who he is at this point, he's
thirty years old, he's been in the league for a while.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
This is who he is.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
This is the best game you're gonna get out of
Dak Prescott. Right, The Dak Prescott games where I'm gonna
throw for four hundred and three and three touchdowns and
potentially throw us to victory, those days don't happen. Right,
You don't get that from Dak anymore because he's older.
He does he doesn't just physically doesn't do things.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Fundy like forts play yard scramble.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
No, this is this noe, Hey, no, I'm telling you
this is that he had a good game tonight, Right,
Dak Prescott had a good game tonight, And but to
expect him to be that big, dynamic guy that he
showed you was in the past, he's not that quarterback.
And with all as great as Dak Prescott played, the
Cowboys scored twenty points. Twenty points in a game where
(27:40):
they should have needed thirty and they only had were
lucky that Justin Herbert was awful that they weren't looking
up on this scoreboard. So for the Cowboys, yeah, okay, look,
I get Look, you a win's a win. You're excited,
you're about whatever you need mentally to convince yourself that
things are back on the right track. Okay, I get it.
But you know the truth about Dak is, Yes, this
was a good game, dakkad. This is also the best
(28:01):
game you can expect him to have. And it's a
game where the Cowboys scored twenty points, right, and they
should have probably lost because their defense was lucky that
the other quarterback just I don't know what happened to
Justin Herbert tonight. He was an accurate he sailed the football.
It's probably the worst game I have seen him play,
I don't know that I've seen him actually play worse
than what he did tonight overall, top to bottom. So
(28:22):
so that's the reality is, Hey, yeah, Dak said, he
celebrate Dak, he played great, He made clutch plays.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
It was awesome.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yes, he did get sacked a lot tonight, he had,
he got sacked five times.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
He still came back.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But this is now the ceiling for him, and the
ceiling is not boy, Hey, this was where he made
the clutch plays on a night that wasn't his night. No,
this is about as much of Dak Prescott's night's he's
ever gonna have. And is that going to be enough
for the Cowboys going forward? That's the big question, because
now the Cowboys winning doesn't put the you know, doesn't
put to bed the forty nine ers loss, or the
(28:52):
fact that they fell asleep against the Cardinals. It doesn't,
It doesn't do any of those things, but it does
show you that, hey, if everything is working, Dak can
give you a night like this, and that's really good.
But when you're giving a guy, when you'ven this guy
forty million dollars, you know, forty five million dollars a year,
you expect, Hey, you got to give me a little
bit more than that. You got to have more times.
But this is but look, this is Dak Prescott who
(29:14):
has been overvalued for his whole career because he's the
quarterback of the Cowboys, and he pushes his advantage because
he knows that Jerry Jones wanted to pay him, because
Dak Prescott succeeding for the Cowboys makes Jerry Jones look good.
I drafted him, he fell in the draft, and look
where we got him, and nobody else could. He's a
draft fined for me. And as long as he's paying
to be the quarterback of the Cowboys, it looks good
for Jerry Jones.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
So that's but that's been Dak.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
But now to think that suddenly, hey we're gonna get
this all new Dak or Dak No, No, this is
this is kind of who Dak Prescott is. So this
is kind of the ceiling. So it's great for Dak,
but this is the ceiling of what you're gonna get
from him.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
That's all right, It's week the end of week six,
plenty of time. We always talk about separating the the
league calendar into quarters, and you want to be playing
your best football when we're heading towards you know, Dolly
Parton singing at halftime of Thanksgiving Day. He is one
(30:09):
of the news items of today. So sure, but I
mean that that's when you want to start making your
run to where your your your climb and your peak
like the guy off of the the yodelan dude on
the price is right. I mean, we got to make
our climb then. But he's been lamar Odom. He's been
in every he literally has been in every other game.
Guy this year in the NFL, well, you know what,
today he averaged nine point one yards per pass place
(30:33):
and you compare that to the league over the year,
that would rank second.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Okay, that's the one time last week he averaged six
yards per pass.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I mean, show us today, Show us today. And he
got the job done. As the Cowboys are victorious. Look,
they're not all going to be masterpieces. And he's not
counted on week to week to put up massive numbers
because normally the defense is going to do the do
the job right. Last week he ran into the forty
(31:03):
nine ers. This week, the forty nine ers ran into
a really good Cleveland defense, a couple of guys got
hurt and suddenly everybody there is terrible and the sky's falling.
So that's what we do in radio and TV here.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
But it's right, I'm all made up.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Let's go put the camera on.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He's in every other game. Guy, he's not a say look,
your people just want more from Dak Prescott than what
he is.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, it ain't my money, No, I know, Harry's the
only one who's gotta worry about whatever. He's giving me
enough completions per dollars? Is he winning games?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
But this is but, but this is but this is
about hey, getting that money and the responsibility you have
to produce on the flatten.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Don't go throwing out Spider Man quotes that you're changing.
We had great paychecks, come great responsibility.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So what you're trying to do here, you know, through
five games, he's got six touchdowns and floors right, his
quarterback is well below.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I don't care about quarterback.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I'm telling you, okay there, Yeah, they're four and two
that you know, they'd be just an average, they'd be
the Jets if they did they beat the Giants opening week,
where Dak presk I could have played quarterback for the
Cowboys opening week.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
Yeah, I could have handed the ball off.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I'm gonna all right, So I mean, look, yes, you
you win this game. But it's it's not that everything
is suddenly great and problems are solved and Dak is great.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Look, dak Is, dak Is is playing.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
He's he's an average quarterback. He had a good game,
but look at look at this body of work. I mean,
this is who you are when they needed them. Look
what happened last week is a really good defense. He
was awful, he was he was awful against Arizona, Right,
he was awful. This is who he is, right and
and and I'm telling you, the narrative is gonna be
(32:50):
that Dak is great, dak is and just don't believe it.
Just understand quarterback's limited.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
But yeah, so you're gonna hear.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Back back back Dak dack den You at Dak Dak,
Dak dack dac And that's not the truth.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
That's not the truth.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
And people are still gonna expect more from him, and
he's gonna fall short because he's just not that quarterback anymore.
I mean he was, he was on the cusp a
few years ago, and I thought Dak was gonna take
that next step right when he when he's coming off
that that thirty and eleven season of twenty nineteen, I said, okay,
he's gonna be really But then you know, we have
COVID twenty twenty and he gets hurt. All right, that's fine.
(33:28):
Then he bounces back and says, hey, man, thirty seven,
his best season thirty three years ago, shut up, best
season three years ago. Okay, he's twenty six, twenty seven
years old. Now he takes that leap. And then last year, eh,
he was just okay. And now this year so far
he's been less than just okay. And that and that,
and that's kind of what you're gonna get going forward,
(33:50):
because you're never gonna see him being the level he
was at the one year, the one finale. He had
two really good years out of three twenty nineteen and
twenty twenty one. Twenty twenty, he got her.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
It was COVID.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Okay, we'll throw that one out. That's something that just
didn't exist for him. But you know, getting back to
where he is, you can see already through a season
and a little bit over a third since twenty twenty one,
he just simply isn't that quarterback well.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
The bigger thing, right because Brandon Staley, we get all
into his management of fourth down situations. I still need
an exorcism in the locker room given the number of
guys that have been hurt and missed time and whatever.
But you come into this game give it up twenty
six points per game. Defensively, you haven't figured anything out,
(34:33):
you haven't fixed anything. And Khalil Mack had a massive
game last week with his six sacks and he had
one right off the jump, and they did get to
dak five times today. But coming into this game, the
teams behind them in terms of points allowed per game,
Denver last at thirty three and a third per game,
Carolina one step higher, Washington, Chicago, the and the Cardinals.
(35:01):
That's it. So it's not exactly a world beater. So
to you, the larger point is you didn't exactly go
in and dominate a top team, but you did what
you needed to today and you had a good game,
including that sprint for eighteen yards that they will run
on a loop because because it was a good playfake
(35:22):
and he found the end zone. But the point being
that the Chargers haven't exactly been world beaters on defense.
That's the other part of the Brandon Staley narrative that
at some point has to get some run as well.
If we're going to keep talking about fourth down decisions,
how about the fact that you can't get your defense
off the field oftentimes.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
A stunning result that I think people are still having
some difficulty with right now. The Phillies trying to put
away the Diamondbacks on the top of the ninth lead
game one, five to three, but the Diamondbacks have a
runner on, runner out. The Rangers are up to zip
going home over the Astros. They had a five to
one lead. They hold on. Nathany Ovaldi gets out of
(36:12):
a bases loaded no out jam. What it looked like,
here come the Astros to take control of this game.
He strikes out nine and six innings. He gets the win.
Framber Valdez gets the loss, and now the Astros have
to go to Texas. I have to go wella Dallas
and Arlington down to zip to try to get back
in the series. Now Here's the thing is, I understand
(36:33):
the intimidation factor of the Astros. Here are the champions,
a right, maybe they still know the pitches, maybe they don't.
Here are the champs, and we're afraid of them because
they've been so good for so long. It's a lot
of the same players from last year, the last couple
of years. And boy, I am it because I can
see the Astros going in the next three games and
putting up like thirty five runs and suddenly, boom, they're
(36:56):
back in this series. Right, I understand that. However, however,
there's enough history, there's enough data to look back on
to know that coming back from two zip just doesn't happen. Okay,
in the last twenty seven years in baseball history, right,
last twenty seven years, a team has gotten down two
ZIP in a best of seven series and come back
(37:18):
to win twice.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Okay, twice.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Once we all know, Red Sox down three zip against
the Yankees, and that's one of the momentous comebacks ever
in the history of all sports. Right, that and the
Dodgers coming back from down two ZIP against the Braves
in twenty twenty during the Bubble playoffs.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
That's it. All the other two zip leads those teams
have won.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
When you get up to nothing in a series, it
used to be, well, you know, it doesn't start until
a team lose on its own field. No, you get
down two zip, that's it, and I know that. Hey
the Astros. Everybody's afreight. This series is over. The Rains
are up to nothing. They're up to nothing. They're going
home and maybe they split the next two. But okay,
they're up three to one. I mean it's yes, the Astros.
(38:00):
This is not one hundred and ten win juggernaut. This
is an Astros team that barely squeaked in, that won
ninety games, that needed the Raiders to lose at the
end just to come in and be the division champion.
This is not a great Astros team. This is not
a team that I look up and go man, the
all stars up and down the lineup all. This is
a team that struggled to win ninety games. Is this
the Astros year? Not like it was years before?
Speaker 3 (38:22):
If it was, I.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Would say, well, here there are they still have that.
They still have that mentality one win, you never know
what could happen? Everything, can they can catch fire and
we can see it roll out from there. But you're
going on the road and you have to win the
next two to get back into it, and it just
doesn't happen, right, It just doesn't happen twice in the
last twenty seven years in baseball history.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, I mean, you thought you've gotten some continuity down
the stretch. You had a lot of miss time over
the course of the year. You're looking at Alvarez, who
just don't pitch to him. Seems to be the mantra here.
He took the hat trick of strikeouts game one and
then came back with a couple of home runs, but
he meant fifty games this year. You look at l
(39:03):
Tuove was limited to ninety games, and various players missing
a couple of weeks here and there, but thinking they
got healthy and right down the stretch. And then you
look at Valdez's last two times out. He's been awful.
Couldn't get through the third today, four runs allowed, only
lasted two and two thirds. So invincibility that that cloak,
(39:28):
that super suit is gone, right, and for the Rangers,
even without the high priced editions, And now we're seeing
Sureser is gonna pitch game three? How much do you
love that?
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I kind of feel like I'm watching the Mets, so
I'm at this point.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
I'm like, well, you.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Just kind of adopted him at this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Well, well and the same thing with Verlander, right, I
mean later for the as, it's like I haven't met
playing in every King.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
No, that's just it, right, It's like, which guy do
you like more? And look, nobody's feeling sorry for the Astros.
I do like that, you know long coat that Dusty
Baker wears that kind of looks like Darth Vader's cape
and all. But for the Astros. Yeah, not a charmed life,
not a massive runoff. And it's what we've been talking
about with the playoffs, you and I of winning one
(40:15):
hundred games or whatever, it doesn't matter. Are you hot
at the right time, do you pull the right strings?
And can you jump out to a lead? Right? That
that's been The other thing is are you fast starters?
Cause we've seen starting pitching get beat up pretty early
in these games, and then it's a frantic pace to
(40:36):
try to come back.
Thanks for listening to the best of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Carmon podcast. Be sure to catch us
live every weeknight from ten pm to two am Eastern
seven to eleven pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. Find
your local station for The Jason Smith Show with Mike
Harmon at Fox Sports Radio dot com, or stream us
live every night on the iHeartRadio app by searching FSR.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is the best of The Jason Smith Show with
Mike Harmon on Fox Sports Radio.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Well it is over in Los Angeles. The Cowboys walk
away with a twenty to seventeen victory over the Chargers.
Justin Herbert is picked off by Stefan Gilmour. The Chargers
last gasp drive ends with an I int Herbert had
been sacked the play before by Micah Parsons, so it
(00:51):
was uphill odds at best on those last couple of plays,
But Justin Herbert puts a cherry on top of this
craptastic Sunday. The Chargers lose and the Cowboys go on
to win. And look, the Cowboys played well tonight. Right now,
I give Dak Prescott credit. He played well against a
pretty good defense. You know, he made good decisions with
the football. He ran the football well through for one,
(01:13):
ran for one. Look, Dak had a good game, right,
I'm not taking away from Dak. He had a good game. Now,
was he unbelievable? Did he control the game?
Speaker 3 (01:20):
No?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
But Dak played a good game. And tonight he was
the Cowboys best player. Okay, I'll give I'll give him that,
But this game tonight, the Chargers should have won this
game by ten points. Justin Herbert was so awful and
he was inaccurate, and he sailed the ball and he
missed open receivers the entire game and it was frustrating
to watch. It was frustrating to see just hey, easy
(01:44):
plays that the Chargers should make. And it's not like
the Cowboys had great coverage on the wide receivers, specifically
Keenan Allen. He was open a lot and still Allen
could have had a bigger game. And there were plays
where Justin Herbert just missed been wide receivers. We talked
about it a few minutes ago. On a big third
and eight from inside the ten yard line, Quentin Johnson,
(02:06):
who could have had his big hey, hey, I'm here,
I'm actually in the NFL play where he would have
caught a touchdown pass Justin Herbert doesn't see him. And
I don't know if he locked in on receivers too
long tonight or whatever it was, but he was just
off and it was a lot of unforced errors. He
wasn't sacked until the very end of the game. That
time he got sacked by Micah Parsons was the first
(02:27):
time he got sacked all night. It's not like he
had to keep picking himself up off the ground. It
was just a bad game. And when your quarterback, when
your franchise quarterback, plays like that, it's hard to overcome it.
When you look at why did the Cowboys win? Hey,
cowboys played fine right now. I'm sure they'll talk after
the game and say, oh, yeah, we're back, We're this.
We came in with all the emotion we had to
(02:47):
win this game, and it was so excited the Chargers.
They should have won this game by ten points. And
I look at Justin Herbert and say, he really just
crushed them tonight. As good as he is, as great
a quarterback as he is, he was just that bad tonight.
Where even an average night by Herbert, and I mean it,
it's a double digit win for the Chargers in this.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Game twenty two to thirty seven on the night to
twenty seven two touchdowns, the pick and then that late sack.
I have to ask this question, and I do so. Nah,
maybe both my tongue planted firmly in cheek because I
was watching it with the fellas here in the studio.
They're making us sound so pretty tonight. Alex Tyshirt, Ryan
Berschinger and Micah Parson's on the sack. I mean he
(03:27):
lands on Justin Herbert, right right on top of him.
Isn't that supposed to be a penalty?
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
I don't think it should be, But if we're gonna
call it sometimes, that's one where he came right through him, right,
big hit. I think all of us that are football
watchers would agree that it shouldn't be. But in a
day and age where we see that flagged oftentimes seemed
in the moment where it's like, uh, waiting for the
(03:53):
laundry to fly, that it never came, but the pockets
suddenly collapsing and that was out a second and two
with just under two two minutes remaining, So kind of
the curious, Hey, let's do a big drop back here,
not that you're necessarily gonna You haven't run the ball
particularly well at all. Twenty three carries fifty three yards
on the night, but a second in short seemed like
(04:15):
a quick get the ball out of Herbert's hands might
have been the way to go. But you get the
breakthrough for Parsons. To your point, yeah, erratic all night long.
There's several throws to keenan Allen. You could do a
super cut of those that are just easy. A couple
of near misses, you know, the old hey, the if
the DBS catch could catch kind of things, the interception
(04:39):
total would have been higher, and you got a really
good effort from the Chargers defense overall. McCarthy decision making notwithstanding,
you know you did a good job. Tony Pollard average
two yards of carry effective on the pass game, but
even that was five catches for twenty yards. And then
he had one where he should have been stopped after
(05:01):
a seven yard gain and instead a mistackle turned it
into a sixty yard sprint. So you did a good
job of containing them in five sacks of Prescott. He
was under duress, quite the opposite of what you saw
for Herbert all night. But they make the plays when
it counts, get the field goal just over two minutes
(05:21):
remaining and the Chargers can't finish the job for Justin
Herbert and I will be you know, we're ahead of
the curve. We always ask it, right, as much as
you make on Staley and everything else, when's Justin Herbert
gonna win games in the fourth quarter? Form?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah, look, I'll answer. I'll answer your two questions in
the order you asked them. The first one was the
penalty that wasn't called Micaeh Parsons falling on top of
Justin Herbert. You're right, it is a play that you
kind of see called. But what we have seen in
the NFL now and now that we've had enough to
look at replay and watch enough games, is that the
best I can say for replay is this, and you
(05:59):
take this however you want. Sometimes the NFL sees a
play and just says, now it's fine. And sometimes they
do all they can to make a decision in the
review booth that benefits a team.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Booom.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
They do it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
All the time. That's what that's the It's so inconsistent.
It's the only consistent thing I can say.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Tweet that out with the in front of the fire,
and here's.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
The Cowboys who are the beneficiary of that call. If
that happened the other way for the Chargers and it
was Bosa who was falling on top of Dak Prescott,
can I say for certain would have been called the
same way.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
I can't, because the NFL called.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
They call that when they decide they want to look
at something and overturn it, they do it right. Like
I knew yesterday when the Jets were playing the Eagles,
and the Eagles go for it on fourth and goal
from inside the Jets three, and he gets stopped and fumbles, right,
I knew when they go back and look at it
seeing this play, it's okay, at what point is he down?
(06:59):
At what point do you rule the quarterback is down?
I get, oh, he's not technically on the ground, but
you're a quarterback now and you're protecting there's a time
when you're down. I'm watching this replay and we've seen
you've seen the play that hurts gets rule for a touchdown,
And I said, they're gonna go up and they're gonna
look at this soak. They're gonna look at this play
from a thousand different angles and They're gonna do everything
they can to give Jalen Hurts the touchdown.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Everything.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
The Eagles are five and zero and he's a big star.
They're gonna do everything they can to give the Eagles
a touchdown. And what happens, Boom, Eagles get a touchdown.
Right all the time. It happens all the time. Right.
Let me go back to the flag with in the
Jets game against Mahomes, when the Jets pick off Mahomes
a chance to win the game. Instead, the flag is
thrown after the Jets intercept the ball. And I'm just
(07:41):
going off the Jets game, and I'm sure other other
fans go, yeah, I remember this one.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
We're at the end of the Giants bills last night.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah, like this team we played here. Yeah, you can
say that. That's the best thing I can say. Sometimes
when it's a call like that, Oh it looks legit, Yeah,
let it go cowboys, Yeah, Cowboys get the sack. But
other times it's we're, you know, we need to do
everything that we can to look at this to see
if it's something we can overturn or that we absolutely
need to do. Whatever it is, We're gonna look so
(08:08):
careful at it just to see what we can do,
if we can really alter this decision from the field,
and that's what happens. That's the best thing I can
I can answer that about that, when you talk about
Parson Sack, if it happened versus the charge, it's the
best thing I can s No.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
It's the curiosity, right, I mean the Darren Waller getting grabbed, held,
interfered with, and it's a no call and off we
go into the good night. As bad as Dable and
company were at managing that game. Should have won that game, right,
should have finished that game off. You'd look at the
Bears game to go back to that and the Viking.
(08:44):
There was a big play along the sideline because we've
had trouble in the NFL adjudicating whether a foot goes
out of bounds, whether a ball's gone out of bounds
before it's recovered cleanly. The Bears in their postgame explanation said, yeah,
this is one of those games where there weren't enough cameras,
didn't have ample angles to overturn that and keep the ball.
(09:05):
Huge play along the sideline that would have given them
a great field position instead, well, you know, the moving on,
so to your point. I'm sure some folks are cringing
and maybe saying stop whining, Jets guy or Bears guy
or whatever, but it is something to consider. There. There
(09:25):
is a It is a business, and certain outcomes and
certain discussions are good for business. And you know, yesterday
was a day where I saw, you know, Bill Krackenberger,
who does the show Countdown to kick Off here on
Sunday mornings. He goes, I don't think I've ever been
told by more people that the NFL's fixed after the
(09:49):
games from the early games of yesterday, because there was
a lot of curiosity, right, some strange results, and look,
that's the NFL in a nutshell, all right. We talked
about it with Lock and for a lat are the
only thing that's been a given road teams are in
games and home field advantages might be a myth like
a yetti and that the Unders are cashing with great regularity,
(10:12):
but it means week to week we're getting some really
strange play all along, right, Cleveland, we love the defense.
Injuries to keep players for the forty nine ers. PJ.
Walker was the quarterback. That was the guy the Bears
decided they didn't need. It's their back and he starts
for Cleveland and engineers a win. I mean, it is
(10:32):
a weird world out there, so yeah, I mean have
your conspiracy theories. In the end, you got to figure
out how to prove it and have some fun with that.
And look, I just think, you know, the human element
comes in and there's gonna be bad calls, decisions, quick
conversations of did you see that cleanly? Because like even
the way the Chargers got the ball back to eventually
(10:55):
punch it into the end zone right with the ever
touchdown the punt, you could say, okay, he blocked his
protector back in, but the Chargers player makes contact with
the returner, So what Why wasn't it called there? Why
did the Chargers get the ball after the ensuing scrum?
(11:16):
It's just curiosity to me sometimes how these are adjudicated now.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
When it comes to look, that's the best thing I
can say right that that's just the reality of the NFL.
And you look, just like in the NBA, the NBA
knows what referees they're sending to do playoff games. They
know when they're sending Scott Foster to do a son's
playoff game. They know when they're doing all of these
things right.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
They know.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
So you can't sit here and tell me that he
officiating is always one hundred percent on the up and up.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
They know what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
If something gets tilted one way or another, hey, stars
get protected.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Star teams go. Yeah, of course they do. Of course
they do.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And that's an example of it because the Mica parsising
is something easily if it was Joey Bosa, I can say, well,
by letter of the law, and then Troy Aikman's on
TV saying, law, I disagree, but letter of the law.
This is a this is a penalty. They've been calling
this in the NFL the last few years. As long
as there is some kind of wiggle room and stuff
is open to interpretation, yeah, stuff like this is going
(12:11):
to be able to happen. And it's and you know,
it's not that it's something that that was something so
egregious that cost the Chargers the game, but it's something
that the other way around. Yeah, you know, I don't
think a team other than the Dallas Cowboys are going
to get the beneficiary of that.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It's not gonna happen for him. Jerry Jones is celebrating
right now, he may be dancing in the locker.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific on Fox Sports Radio and the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
The Chargers falling to the Cowboys twenty to seventeen, and
the Cowboys are gonna say, oh, we're so great, we
got it back. The Chargers just said, here, we can't
get it going in the clutch. We're gonna hand you
this game. You want to know why the Chargers fail?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Right?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
We talked about the penal that could have been called
on Micah Parsons for falling on top of Justin Herbert,
But the Justin Herbert clutch gene has become a topic
of conversation, right because each three games the Charges have
lost this year, They've had a chance to win. Herbert's
had a chance to win and at the end and
hasn't done it. I don't know that it's a Justin
(13:18):
Herbert thing as much as it's a Chargers thing. Right.
I want to talk about a couple of plays in
the final in the final possession for the Chargers that
illustrate why the Chargers fall short. Okay, now they get
the ball back after the Cowboys take the lead. They
have all kinds of time left to go. Right, there's
just over two minutes left and the ball they're own
(13:39):
twenty five yard line. They have all kinds of time, right, Okay.
First play is justin Herbert throwing it pass to Keenan
Allen who runs out of bounds a thirty two yard line.
Keenan Allen could have turned it up and gotten the
first down, potentially gotten the first I don't know if
you absolutely would have gotten it, but this is where hey,
it's the end of the game, dude, and yeah, you
(14:00):
were just happy getting the ball and going out of bounds.
Time is not a huge factor. You want to get
first downs because now you're out towards midfield. You get
this first down, right, you're out towards the forty yard
life potentially probably could have gotten out there, but instead
he easily goes out of bounds. Uh, dude, you got
you gotta go for it, man, You gotta have some
kind of sense of urgency and you gotta play smart
(14:21):
and focused. Didn't see it on that play, right, could
have been a first down. Then you have the net.
Then you have that play get wiped out because of
penalty on the Cowboys. So the Chargers take a first
and five. Okay, first and five, second and three. All right, fine,
you know, hey, you're in four down territory. I would
say three plays to get three yards rather than but okay, fine,
(14:41):
that's you decide to go with Justin. Herbert scrambles and
probably could have scrambled for the first down without putting
himself in harm's way, but he slides a good three
yards short of the first down. Dude, it's the end
of the game. Man, try to go.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I get it.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You don't want it, but this is the end of
the game. You're trying. This is where you go in
and you die, and you hold the football out. You
find a way to do it. This is Herbert saying, hey,
we have plenty of time. We have plenty of time.
And then what happens. Micah Parson sacks Justin Herbert and
then he throws an interception. I think it's more of
a Charger's clutch gene overall, and Herbert being the head
of the snake and being the quarterback, he gets the
(15:18):
lion's share of it.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
And yeah, he had an awful game.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
And yes, you know, you look at the clutch thing
with him, and I see part of his fault. But
I just overall look at the Chargers in big moments,
in big situations, and I just don't know if they
have it, Like like they fail on fourth and one,
Brandon Staley goes for it, runs all kinds of different plays,
and they're not good at it. They can't get a
front the biggest plays of the game, the Chargers find
(15:41):
a way to fall short. So I don't know that
it's a it's just strictly a Herbert thing. It looks
to me like it's just a Charger thing. You know,
Charger's gonna charger. You know, they have chances to make
big plays, say hey, we can make a big play
right here, and we don't for one reason or another.
Either we can't execute the play because because we just don't,
or we decide, hey, getting a first down is not
(16:02):
really what I need right here. I need to make
sure that I get out of bounds when there's two
and a half minutes left to go, and I can
still get out of bounds and get a couple more
yards upfield, and maybe if it's second and a half
yard that's the play we take and we get a
first down a little bit easier. Justin Herbert dies for
the first down, we get a first down, it's a
little bit easier. I just don't see it overall from
the Chargers, and to kind of make a take a
(16:25):
big umbrella over the failures of the Chargers why they
fall short. I mean, that's something that sticks out to me,
especially after seeing how they attack those big moments in
the game tonight against Cowboys.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well, and we've been watching it for years, and certainly
with Justin Herbert, just looking up random stats because it's
fun to just find randomness in games decided by seven
points or fewer, because it's one of my pet peeves.
It's not or less or fewer when we're counting. He's
(16:55):
five hundred coming into tonight, so he'll go to one
game underneath everybody's punching bag and close games in primetime.
Kirk Cousins seven games over five hundred in his career,
games decided by zero to seven points. To just show
you perception and where we go and your point on
(17:15):
Alan going out of bounds got himself towards the sideline,
and I don't know if physically, he just couldn't get
himself turned back in and up. But looking at this,
staying on that side of the two minute warning might
have been it before they'd get back up under center.
But either way, you just saw the excellence of execution.
(17:36):
We talk about these game situations. You can't anticipate that
you're blowing everybody out. I would think in season most
of your work is done on fine tuning for situations
like this. I mean, unless I'm just wrong, which is
always possible, but unless I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
(17:58):
But legitimately, right, you're talking about these kind of situations
of all right, what's getting us the next best play in?
How do we execute decision making? Like that's the point
of emphasis, and particularly if you're the Chargers, because you've
done this now for multiple years under Brandon Staley. This
(18:19):
is not new territory where in the final minutes of
a game you're stressing and the fundamentals that you've been
pretty good at taken care of for much of the
game suddenly go out the window. Right, It happens too
frequently to be an accident. You're just showing. Here's another
data point in the long Wikipedia page of inability to
(18:41):
get things done in the final minutes of games because
you had chances, your offensive line had done a good job.
Now to your point from last hour, this should have
never been in doubt. You should have had been able
to pin your ears back and be rushing Dak Prescott,
who they got to five times over the course of
the night, by the way, But for Herbert and for
(19:04):
the Chargers, it's just another head scratcher of Wyatt. Why
does this continue? And in the definition of insanity that
we like to use right the same thing over and
over and expecting different results. This is their identity until
proven otherwise, if we're predicting a close game, I'm predicting
an ll.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
pm Pacific.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Hi, this is Jay Glazer.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
And you may know me for the world of football
or fighting, or even shows like HBO's Ballers. Who you
don't know is for my entire life. I have lived
in something I refer to as the Great depression, anxiety.
So now I'm coming out with a new podcast, Unbreakable,
a mental health podcast with Jay Glazer, where each week
while we.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Talk about mental health. I hope to describe it, give
it words.
Speaker 5 (19:54):
Listen to Unbreakable with Jay Glazer on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever where you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Well, the Cowboys win a thriller over the Chargers.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Not a well played game, but what do we always say,
as long as it's close, that's all that matters.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Cowboys go to four and two, Chargers drop.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
I mean, look, this is a This is a game
where you start to look at the standings now in
the AFC West and you go, oh, wait a minute, man,
everybody else has at least three losses.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Chargers have three, Raiders have three. Chiefs are now going
a two game lead in the division.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
It's one of those years where the Chiefs.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Haven't been great, but they're gonna wind up plinching this
thing by Thanksgiving again.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
It's just gonna.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Happen for But we'll hear from Brandon Stalley coming up
in a few minutes as he's getting finishing talking to
the media. Right now, the Chargers loose to the Cowboys,
and I can already tell you what one because the
show is ahead of the curve. I can already tell
you what one the big driving headline is gonna be
for the Cowboys out of this.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
They're gonna talk and talk and talk and talk, and.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
They're gonna say how great Dak was, and look at Dak,
this was his best game, and look how great we
always knew Dak was this good. And they're gonna talk
about making clutch plays and Micah Parsons sacked the one
defensive play they really made the game. And they're going
to talk about coming off of this loss to San
Francisco and the intestinal fortitude of a champion and going
(21:29):
on the road Monday night baseball, playing a home game
Monday night in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
Look at what they overcame to win.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Boy, we really start believing in ourselves when the reality
is the Chargers gave them this game justin Herbert was awful.
It should have been a Charger win by at least
two touchdowns if he was anything accurate, if he had
an average game, it would have been the Chargers by
two touchdowns. Their touchdown passes that he missed on, multiple
touchdown passes that he missed on, the lack of urgency
(21:57):
at the end of the game. Everything you want to say,
the Cowboys are gonna talk and talk and talk and
there it's yeah, that's great.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I have to listen to it.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
But really, the Chargers gave them this game, and that's
gonna be the overwhelming narrative coming out of Dallas, as hey,
because we have to have this narrative, because we've convinced
ourselves every week is so unbelievably emotional that it's the
super Bowl, and coming off of last week's win, how
do we get back to where we are?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Look at this huge win we met and they're.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Gonna over emphasize the things that they did and not
talk about how and understand that, boy, were lucky because
we escaped on this one. This is gonna be a
win for the team and we're back and we think
we're terrific. Trust me, that's all you're gonna hear from
the Cowboys. And it's not reality. It's not reality at all.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Well it should be. I mean you you take the
positive points, right. History is told by the winners.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
That should be on a T shirt or is that
already a T shirt?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
That's already a thing.
Speaker 4 (22:51):
Really, history is.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Taught by the winners. It's a it's a pretty old statement.
They ad a couple thousand years.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Oh oh, Winston Churchill. Okay, well, if it wasn't in
the crown, I wouldn't have known that. Well, Kinston Churchill
didn't say it, I wouldn't have known that.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Yeah. So the the idea just being that, look I won,
and look, oftentimes it takes us into real world and
off of the playing field. But you know, all the
people that that have the the victory get to you know,
get that verbal history going, write it down. Here's the
the tales of our of our win and in this
(23:28):
case it's going to be Look, he was quiet all day,
but when it mattered, Micah Parsons made the play of
the game. Gilmore had been called for a penalty, had
been you know, kind of abused a little bit by
Keenan Allen on route running over the course of the day,
but when it mattered, he was there and he was
the one that secured the game clinching interception. It's all
(23:52):
the matters, right, succeed and proceed for you had the
the big sixty yard burst off a broken tackle by Tony.
What are they gonna say he was, Well, we talk
about it for fantasy or for any other purposes. He
was over one hundred total yards against the Chargers. Nobody's
gonna remember how that came to pass. Same thing here
for Dak Prescott. He was battered and beaten and bludgeoned
(24:15):
all night, found Cede Lamb when he needed to, found
Brandon Cooks when he needed to, And your field goal
kicker was true. Doesn't matter that Mike McCarthy botched things.
It doesn't matter, you know, here in Los Angeles, because
it's become you know, commonplace. Yeah, I mean, the tail
is going to be about the Chargers and late game
(24:36):
execution and finding some other stats that are now being
pushed forward because people raising their hands on Justin Herbert. Hey,
fourteen fourth quarter comebacks or game winning drives, I should
say eleven fourth quarter comebacks, all of those kind of things. Okay,
But the sentiment, the gut, is that this team finds
(24:59):
a way to uh rip your heart out, to go
back to the old Steve Irwin thing that he said
so many times uh in his career. So I mean
you're you're just looking at a situation for the Cowboys. Yeah,
feel chesty. You got the Rams next. See what Sean
McVeigh dials up for you. Offensively. I know Kyron Williams
(25:20):
is hurt, but it's a curiosity right of what that
offense brings to bear. But you celebrate tonight because your defense,
while they weren't spectacular, they made the two big plays
when it mattered, they.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Did look and they won the game.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
But because of their emotional attachment to every single game
this year, they're gonna inflate this as something that's it.
This is this is not Hey, we went on the
road and we beat that and we beat the forty
nine er.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Yea that flag high heading back home to Dallas.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
Look, victors, Look, I can give you something great for
the Cowboys. But again with this it comes with a
caveat right, So it is with the Cowboys. But I
can give you something great. Look, Dak Prescott played really
well tonight and they will prop him up the next
couple of days.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
Jerry Jones tomorrow will be on one O, four to
three the fan.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
And they'll say this is a Dak Prescott that I
knew this is the Dak Prescott when we gave him
that money. We are expecting games like this and games
like this or what Super Bowl quarterbacks are made from.
And that's exactly what we got from Dak last night,
and he was absolutely magnificent.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
It was Dak.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Okay, that's you're gonna get and they're gonna prop Dak
Prescott up. And yes, he did have a really good
game tonight. Right, he had a really good game. Now
you know the caveat is this is kind of the
peak game that Dak Prescott can have. All Right, Dak
is no longer a twenty five, twenty six year old quarterback. Where, hey,
the best days are ahead of him and his continued
(26:46):
growth is gonna be fun to look forward to. Now,
Dak Prescott is who he is at this point, he's
thirty years old, he's been in the league for a while.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
This is who he is.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
This is the best game you're gonna get out of
Dak Prescott. Right, The Dak Prescott games where I'm gonna
throw for four hundred and three and three touchdowns and
potentially throw us to victory, those days don't happen. Right,
You don't get that from Dak anymore because he's older.
He does he doesn't just physically doesn't do things.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Fundy like forts play yard scramble.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
No, this is this noe, Hey, no, I'm telling you
this is that he had a good game tonight, Right,
Dak Prescott had a good game tonight, And but to
expect him to be that big, dynamic guy that he
showed you was in the past, he's not that quarterback.
And with all as great as Dak Prescott played, the
Cowboys scored twenty points. Twenty points in a game where
(27:40):
they should have needed thirty and they only had were
lucky that Justin Herbert was awful that they weren't looking
up on this scoreboard. So for the Cowboys, yeah, okay, look,
I get Look, you a win's a win. You're excited,
you're about whatever you need mentally to convince yourself that
things are back on the right track. Okay, I get it.
But you know the truth about Dak is, Yes, this
was a good game, dakkad. This is also the best
(28:01):
game you can expect him to have. And it's a
game where the Cowboys scored twenty points, right, and they
should have probably lost because their defense was lucky that
the other quarterback just I don't know what happened to
Justin Herbert tonight. He was an accurate he sailed the football.
It's probably the worst game I have seen him play,
I don't know that I've seen him actually play worse
than what he did tonight overall, top to bottom. So
(28:22):
so that's the reality is, Hey, yeah, Dak said, he
celebrate Dak, he played great, He made clutch plays.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
It was awesome.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yes, he did get sacked a lot tonight, he had,
he got sacked five times.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
He still came back.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But this is now the ceiling for him, and the
ceiling is not boy, Hey, this was where he made
the clutch plays on a night that wasn't his night. No,
this is about as much of Dak Prescott's night's he's
ever gonna have. And is that going to be enough
for the Cowboys going forward? That's the big question, because
now the Cowboys winning doesn't put the you know, doesn't
put to bed the forty nine ers loss, or the
(28:52):
fact that they fell asleep against the Cardinals. It doesn't,
It doesn't do any of those things, but it does
show you that, hey, if everything is working, Dak can
give you a night like this, and that's really good.
But when you're giving a guy, when you'ven this guy
forty million dollars, you know, forty five million dollars a year,
you expect, Hey, you got to give me a little
bit more than that. You got to have more times.
But this is but look, this is Dak Prescott who
(29:14):
has been overvalued for his whole career because he's the
quarterback of the Cowboys, and he pushes his advantage because
he knows that Jerry Jones wanted to pay him, because
Dak Prescott succeeding for the Cowboys makes Jerry Jones look good.
I drafted him, he fell in the draft, and look
where we got him, and nobody else could. He's a
draft fined for me. And as long as he's paying
to be the quarterback of the Cowboys, it looks good
for Jerry Jones.
Speaker 4 (29:35):
So that's but that's been Dak.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
But now to think that suddenly, hey we're gonna get
this all new Dak or Dak No, No, this is
this is kind of who Dak Prescott is. So this
is kind of the ceiling. So it's great for Dak,
but this is the ceiling of what you're gonna get
from him.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
That's all right, It's week the end of week six,
plenty of time. We always talk about separating the the
league calendar into quarters, and you want to be playing
your best football when we're heading towards you know, Dolly
Parton singing at halftime of Thanksgiving Day. He is one
(30:09):
of the news items of today. So sure, but I
mean that that's when you want to start making your
run to where your your your climb and your peak
like the guy off of the the yodelan dude on
the price is right. I mean, we got to make
our climb then. But he's been lamar Odom. He's been
in every he literally has been in every other game.
Guy this year in the NFL, well, you know what,
today he averaged nine point one yards per pass place
(30:33):
and you compare that to the league over the year,
that would rank second.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Okay, that's the one time last week he averaged six
yards per pass.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
I mean, show us today, Show us today. And he
got the job done. As the Cowboys are victorious. Look,
they're not all going to be masterpieces. And he's not
counted on week to week to put up massive numbers
because normally the defense is going to do the do
the job right. Last week he ran into the forty
(31:03):
nine ers. This week, the forty nine ers ran into
a really good Cleveland defense, a couple of guys got
hurt and suddenly everybody there is terrible and the sky's falling.
So that's what we do in radio and TV here.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
But it's right, I'm all made up.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Let's go put the camera on.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
He's in every other game. Guy, he's not a say look,
your people just want more from Dak Prescott than what
he is.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, it ain't my money, No, I know, Harry's the
only one who's gotta worry about whatever. He's giving me
enough completions per dollars? Is he winning games?
Speaker 1 (31:37):
But this is but, but this is but this is
about hey, getting that money and the responsibility you have
to produce on the flatten.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Don't go throwing out Spider Man quotes that you're changing.
We had great paychecks, come great responsibility.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
So what you're trying to do here, you know, through
five games, he's got six touchdowns and floors right, his
quarterback is well below.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I don't care about quarterback.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I'm telling you, okay there, Yeah, they're four and two
that you know, they'd be just an average, they'd be
the Jets if they did they beat the Giants opening week,
where Dak presk I could have played quarterback for the
Cowboys opening week.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
Yeah, I could have handed the ball off.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I'm gonna all right, So I mean, look, yes, you
you win this game. But it's it's not that everything
is suddenly great and problems are solved and Dak is great.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Look, dak Is, dak Is is playing.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
He's he's an average quarterback. He had a good game,
but look at look at this body of work. I mean,
this is who you are when they needed them. Look
what happened last week is a really good defense. He
was awful, he was he was awful against Arizona, Right,
he was awful. This is who he is, right and
and and I'm telling you, the narrative is gonna be
(32:50):
that Dak is great, dak is and just don't believe it.
Just understand quarterback's limited.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
But yeah, so you're gonna hear.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Back back back Dak dack den You at Dak Dak,
Dak dack dac And that's not the truth.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
That's not the truth.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
And people are still gonna expect more from him, and
he's gonna fall short because he's just not that quarterback anymore.
I mean he was, he was on the cusp a
few years ago, and I thought Dak was gonna take
that next step right when he when he's coming off
that that thirty and eleven season of twenty nineteen, I said, okay,
he's gonna be really But then you know, we have
COVID twenty twenty and he gets hurt. All right, that's fine.
(33:28):
Then he bounces back and says, hey, man, thirty seven,
his best season thirty three years ago, shut up, best
season three years ago. Okay, he's twenty six, twenty seven
years old. Now he takes that leap. And then last year, eh,
he was just okay. And now this year so far
he's been less than just okay. And that and that,
and that's kind of what you're gonna get going forward,
(33:50):
because you're never gonna see him being the level he
was at the one year, the one finale. He had
two really good years out of three twenty nineteen and
twenty twenty one. Twenty twenty, he got her.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
It was COVID.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Okay, we'll throw that one out. That's something that just
didn't exist for him. But you know, getting back to
where he is, you can see already through a season
and a little bit over a third since twenty twenty one,
he just simply isn't that quarterback well.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
The bigger thing, right because Brandon Staley, we get all
into his management of fourth down situations. I still need
an exorcism in the locker room given the number of
guys that have been hurt and missed time and whatever.
But you come into this game give it up twenty
six points per game. Defensively, you haven't figured anything out,
(34:33):
you haven't fixed anything. And Khalil Mack had a massive
game last week with his six sacks and he had
one right off the jump, and they did get to
dak five times today. But coming into this game, the
teams behind them in terms of points allowed per game,
Denver last at thirty three and a third per game,
Carolina one step higher, Washington, Chicago, the and the Cardinals.
(35:01):
That's it. So it's not exactly a world beater. So
to you, the larger point is you didn't exactly go
in and dominate a top team, but you did what
you needed to today and you had a good game,
including that sprint for eighteen yards that they will run
on a loop because because it was a good playfake
(35:22):
and he found the end zone. But the point being
that the Chargers haven't exactly been world beaters on defense.
That's the other part of the Brandon Staley narrative that
at some point has to get some run as well.
If we're going to keep talking about fourth down decisions,
how about the fact that you can't get your defense
off the field oftentimes.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Be sure to catch live editions of The Jason Smith
Show with Mike Harmon weekdays at ten pm Eastern, seven
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Speaker 1 (35:51):
A stunning result that I think people are still having
some difficulty with right now. The Phillies trying to put
away the Diamondbacks on the top of the ninth lead
game one, five to three, but the Diamondbacks have a
runner on, runner out. The Rangers are up to zip
going home over the Astros. They had a five to
one lead. They hold on. Nathany Ovaldi gets out of
(36:12):
a bases loaded no out jam. What it looked like,
here come the Astros to take control of this game.
He strikes out nine and six innings. He gets the win.
Framber Valdez gets the loss, and now the Astros have
to go to Texas. I have to go wella Dallas
and Arlington down to zip to try to get back
in the series. Now Here's the thing is, I understand
(36:33):
the intimidation factor of the Astros. Here are the champions,
a right, maybe they still know the pitches, maybe they don't.
Here are the champs, and we're afraid of them because
they've been so good for so long. It's a lot
of the same players from last year, the last couple
of years. And boy, I am it because I can
see the Astros going in the next three games and
putting up like thirty five runs and suddenly, boom, they're
(36:56):
back in this series. Right, I understand that. However, however,
there's enough history, there's enough data to look back on
to know that coming back from two zip just doesn't happen. Okay,
in the last twenty seven years in baseball history, right,
last twenty seven years, a team has gotten down two
ZIP in a best of seven series and come back
(37:18):
to win twice.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Okay, twice.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Once we all know, Red Sox down three zip against
the Yankees, and that's one of the momentous comebacks ever
in the history of all sports. Right, that and the
Dodgers coming back from down two ZIP against the Braves
in twenty twenty during the Bubble playoffs.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
That's it. All the other two zip leads those teams
have won.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
When you get up to nothing in a series, it
used to be, well, you know, it doesn't start until
a team lose on its own field. No, you get
down two zip, that's it, and I know that. Hey
the Astros. Everybody's afreight. This series is over. The Rains
are up to nothing. They're up to nothing. They're going
home and maybe they split the next two. But okay,
they're up three to one. I mean it's yes, the Astros.
(38:00):
This is not one hundred and ten win juggernaut. This
is an Astros team that barely squeaked in, that won
ninety games, that needed the Raiders to lose at the
end just to come in and be the division champion.
This is not a great Astros team. This is not
a team that I look up and go man, the
all stars up and down the lineup all. This is
a team that struggled to win ninety games. Is this
the Astros year? Not like it was years before?
Speaker 3 (38:22):
If it was, I.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Would say, well, here there are they still have that.
They still have that mentality one win, you never know
what could happen? Everything, can they can catch fire and
we can see it roll out from there. But you're
going on the road and you have to win the
next two to get back into it, and it just
doesn't happen, right, It just doesn't happen twice in the
last twenty seven years in baseball history.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yeah, I mean, you thought you've gotten some continuity down
the stretch. You had a lot of miss time over
the course of the year. You're looking at Alvarez, who
just don't pitch to him. Seems to be the mantra here.
He took the hat trick of strikeouts game one and
then came back with a couple of home runs, but
he meant fifty games this year. You look at l
(39:03):
Tuove was limited to ninety games, and various players missing
a couple of weeks here and there, but thinking they
got healthy and right down the stretch. And then you
look at Valdez's last two times out. He's been awful.
Couldn't get through the third today, four runs allowed, only
lasted two and two thirds. So invincibility that that cloak,
(39:28):
that super suit is gone, right, and for the Rangers,
even without the high priced editions, And now we're seeing
Sureser is gonna pitch game three? How much do you
love that?
Speaker 1 (39:40):
I kind of feel like I'm watching the Mets, so
I'm at this point.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
I'm like, well, you.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Just kind of adopted him at this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Well, well and the same thing with Verlander, right, I
mean later for the as, it's like I haven't met
playing in every King.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
No, that's just it, right, It's like, which guy do
you like more? And look, nobody's feeling sorry for the Astros.
I do like that, you know long coat that Dusty
Baker wears that kind of looks like Darth Vader's cape
and all. But for the Astros. Yeah, not a charmed life,
not a massive runoff. And it's what we've been talking
about with the playoffs, you and I of winning one
(40:15):
hundred games or whatever, it doesn't matter. Are you hot
at the right time, do you pull the right strings?
And can you jump out to a lead? Right? That
that's been The other thing is are you fast starters?
Cause we've seen starting pitching get beat up pretty early
in these games, and then it's a frantic pace to
(40:36):
try to come back.
Hosts And Creators
Jason Smith
Mike Harmon
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